EXECUTIVE DECISION . Directed by Stuart Baird; written by Jim and John Thomas; produced by Joel Silver for Warner Bros. Starring Kurt Russell and Halle Berry. Rated R (violence, but not a lot)
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After a shaky start, Executive Decision settles down to be a pretty fair suspense/action yarn.
If you can stay awake through the first half hour (maybe it wasn't really that long, but it seemed like it) of rather clumsy story setting-up, you'll enjoy the rest of the picture. Most of the movie is well-paced and exciting. Quite exciting enough, in fact, to make the plot's logical lapses and technological implausibilities easy to swallow.
The basic story involves an airplane in distress (terrorists have hijacked it) and anyone who's ever flown knows that's an almost foolproof starter for an exciting storyline. Executive Decision gives us a different twist, though, with something of the flavor of Die Hard or Under Seige mixed in. Through some high-tech hocus-pocus that actually plays more believeably than it sounds, an anti-terrorist commando team sneaks aboard the hijacked airliner, using a prototype stealth-looking plane and a connecting tube.
Once aboard, they have to figure out how to disarm not only the terrorists, but a bomb connected to enough nerve gas to knock out the east coast. While hoping that the brass back in Washington don't get nervous and just decide to be safe and shoot them down anyway.
Russell is a plausible and appealing intellectual hero-type, similar to Harrison Ford's characters in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. Berry is a plucky flight attendant, and for contrast, we have Marla Maples Trump, of all people, as a colleague who cringes whenever Berry's character does something risky.
The rest of the commando team are fun to watch, too, especially Joe Morton as the bomb expert who has to work under especially trying conditions and Oliver Platt as a hacker/engineer.
All of the obstacles they have to surmount, as well as the eventual outcome of the piece, aren't hard to predict. But the story is played with such gusto, and is paced and filmed so well (except for that curiously sub-standard opening stuff) that we really don't mind. But, for goodness sakes, don't drive recklessly trying to get to Executive Decision on time. You won't miss anything essential in the first fifteen minutes and you'll probably enjoy the movie more!