After Action Report: Air Force One

Air Force One holds up very well! It's a tight, well directed and particularly well dressed action film. You can absolutely understand why Wolfgang Petersen was chosen; his experience creating Das Boot was surely useful in figuring out how to express the cramped quarters on the jumbo jet and his preference for using fast, quick cuts to SFX shots really sets the mood of the movie. It's so incredibly lean, too, with the run time evaporating in front of you. Despite the name there's no ra-ra patriotism and despite the high concept premise it never devolves into a Predator-style battle between superhumans. And there's almost nothing that feels excessive; it's pure drama with no sex and no stopping for philosophy. And of course, Harrison Ford is always great!

We talked about the music from Air Force One that was used to temp track Wing Commander in the intro but maybe the most interesting connection to Wing Commander is that the VFX team that worked on Wing Commander's previous job was Air Force One. Their studio, Boss Films, had gone out of business and the line producer built a new team from their artists. You can find a neat article about Boss Films' work on Air Force One here.