Word: planes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
NEWARK, N.J.: Newark International Airport was closed for several hours this morning after a Federal Express cargo jet crashed as it was coming in for a landing. Eyewitnesses said the plane slammed into the runway as it descended and then flipped onto its back, sending flames spewing from the fuselage as it skidded across the tarmac. Miraculously, the plane's two crew members and three passengers survived, scrambling out a side cockpit window as flames quickly enveloped the aircraft. All five people were taken to a nearby hospital, treated and then released, a company spokesman said...
This fantasy--that such an exemplary figure could actually get elected in modern America--is actually wilder than the story Air Force One is telling. It concerns demented terrorists who somehow insinuate themselves onto the presidential plane and take the Chief Executive and everyone else aboard hostage. Their offer is lives for a life--specifically that of a genocidal tyrant named General Radek, president of a breakaway Russian republic now being held in a Moscow jail...
Being quite a provincial foreigner, however, he does not reckon with the power of American pragmatism. Having eluded the invaders, the President (who, we are informed, won a Congressional Medal of Honor piloting a rescue chopper in Vietnam) is stalking the surprisingly capacious byways of the plane, armed mainly with native wit and a "Don't tread on me" philosophy. There is good--sometimes witty--suspense in Marshall's single-handed efforts to coordinate a rescue effort by his Washington staff with his own attempts to set his people free using whatever modest tools--a table knife, a cell phone...
...altogether believable, but for anyone who has actually flown on the eponymous aircraft, Air Force One seems a bit less authentic than Attack of the Crab Monsters. To their credit, the filmmakers do not pretend that terrorists masquerading as Russian cameramen could simply stroll onto the President's plane; the script calls for a rogue Secret Service agent to give them their security clearances. Fine--except that even the mechanics on Air Force One work on a buddy system, one keeping tabs on the other. So presumably you need at least two rogue agents. On the plane itself, there...
...filmmakers get a lot of small details right, like the look of the onboard conference room (President Clinton arranged a tour for Harrison Ford and director Wolfgang Petersen), but much else is imaginary. That really cool presidential escape pod? The real plane has nothing like it. The parachute deck from which passengers leap to safety? Air Force One doesn't have such a deck. It doesn't even have parachutes--they can't work in a 747's slipstream. The gun locker right near the press area? No way. But who knows--maybe an escape pod is in Bill Clinton...