For some reason, when I sat down and watched Executive Decision, I also remembered the somewhat similar but more popular movie Die Hard that starred Bruce Willis. Executive Decision stars Kurt Russell, though he plays a completely different type of character.
Russell is Dr. David Grant, an analyst for army intelligence. After an unsuccessful raid in Italy to recover a Soviet nerve gas by Colonel Austin Travis (Steven Seagal), the world’s top terrorist, El Sayed Jaffa, is captured. In order to ensure his release, Muslim terrorists hijack a Boeing 747 plane en route from Athens to Washington DC, and detonate a bomb in a London restaurant. The terrorist demand the release of Jaffa, or they will detonate the nerve gas above Washington DC, but enough gas to wipe out half of the eastern seaboard. With 8 hours left and the clock ticking, 400 lives above and 400 million below, Grant and a Special Forces team board the plane unnoticed in midair and set out to work—find the bomb, defuse it, and reclaim the plane from the terrorist.
Executive Decision makes good entertainment from beginning to end. Russell makes a good character who’s smart about bombs and weapons and knows how to use a gun when he needs to.
However, the film’s effectiveness as an action thriller is rather nimble. It’s in the tradition of the actioneer Die Hard, which quite frankly had almost the same plot but in a building instead of a plane. Even so, the film manages to pull off a share of excitements and thrills.
Executive Decision also makes a great use out of its intensity. The tension builds up throughout the two hours until the final battle aboard the plane.
Executive Decision was an exciting and entertaining though not effective action thriller. It went on to become a box-office success and opened to mildly positive reviews. I actually liked the movie better overall then I thought I would.
*** ½/5
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