1996 US action film by Stuart Baird
Executive Decision
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by
| Stuart Baird
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Written by
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Produced by
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Starring
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Cinematography
| Alex Thomson
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Edited by
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Music by
| Jerry Goldsmith
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Production
company
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Distributed by
| Warner Bros.
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Release date
|
- March 15, 1996
(
1996-03-15
)
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Running time
| 133 minutes
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Country
| United States
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Language
| English
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Budget
| $55 million
[1]
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Box office
| $122.1 million
[1]
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Executive Decision
is a 1996 American
action thriller film
[2]
directed by
Stuart Baird
(in his directorial debut) and written by
Jim Thomas
and
John Thomas
, who also produced the film with
Joel Silver
. It stars
Kurt Russell
,
Steven Seagal
,
Halle Berry
,
John Leguizamo
,
Oliver Platt
,
Joe Morton
,
David Suchet
and
B.D. Wong
. It depicts the rescue of an airliner hijacked by terrorists, by a small team placed on the plane in mid-flight. The film was released in the United States on March 15, 1996, by
Warner Bros.
It grossed $122 million against a $55 million budget.
Plot
[
edit
]
In May 1995,
Lieutenant Colonel
Austin Travis leads an unsuccessful
Special Forces
black ops raid on a
Chechen mafia
safe house in
Trieste
,
Italy
, to recover a stolen
Soviet
nerve agent
, DZ-5. Three months later,
Oceanic Airlines
Flight 343, a
Boeing 747-200
, leaves
Athens
bound for
Washington, D.C.
, with over 400 passengers aboard including Nagi Hassan, lieutenant of the imprisoned terrorist leader El Sayed Jaffa. Hassan and his men hijack the flight, demanding Jaffa's release. Meanwhile, just moments before the hijacking, a suicide bomber working for Jaffa destroys a
London
Marriott hotel
restaurant.
Dr. David Grant, the U.S. Army intelligence consultant behind the botched raid, is summoned to a meeting at the Pentagon to plan an operation to retake the plane. Grant doubts Hassan's demands, suspecting he engineered Jaffa's capture, and intends to use the 747 to detonate a bomb loaded with the DZ-5 in U.S. airspace. The Pentagon authorizes a mid-air insertion of Travis'
special operations
team onto the hijacked airliner using the experimental "Remora
F117x
" aircraft. Grant and
DARPA
engineer Dennis Cahill reluctantly join the mission.
The Remora intercepts and docks with the airliner. Grant, Cahill, and team members Cappy, Baker, Louie and Rat successfully board but Cappy is injured after a fall. Severe turbulence strains the docking tunnel. Travis sacrifices himself by closing the 747's hatch before it decompresses. The Remora is destroyed along with the team's communications equipment, leaving the Pentagon unaware of their survival. They conduct a covert search for the bomb, hoping to neutralize it and storm the cabin. Grant accidentally reveals his presence to flight attendant Jean, but successfully recruits her to assist their search, despite Hassan's suspicions.
The team locates the bomb and Cappy, despite his injuries, guides Cahill in disarming it until they discover its arming device has an additional, remote-controlled trigger. Jaffa, released by U.S officials in an attempt to resolve the situation, calls Hassan from a private jet to tell him he is on his way to Algeria, but Hassan abruptly ends the call. Grant and the others realize Hassan's men are unaware of the bomb and Hassan's true intentions, after he kills one of them for rebuking him. He also inadvertently reveals that one of the passengers is a sleeper agent and the trigger-man for the bomb.
The Pentagon dispatches U.S. Navy
F-14 Tomcats
to shoot down the 747, prompting Hassan to execute passenger U.S. Senator Jason Mavros as a warning. Baker uses
Morse code
via the 747's taillights to signal the fighters that the team made it aboard, requesting an extra ten minutes to neutralize the bomb and retake the 747, despite already crossing into U.S. airspace. Jean spots a man with an
electronic device
and informs Grant, who enters the passenger cabin to take the suspected individual by surprise, only to find he is merely a diamond thief. Grant spots the real sleeper, Demou, and fights him for the detonator. Hassan attempts to shoot Grant, but is himself shot by an on-board
air marshal
.
The commandos storm the cabin as a firefight ensues. Grant struggles to wrestle the detonator from Demou's grip while Baker and Rat gun-down several terrorists. Louie assists Grant by fatally shooting Demou and eliminating the remaining terrorists. Demou, however, manages to arm the bomb before dying, and stray bullets from a terrorist's weapon pierce a window causing
explosive decompression
. The bomb is disarmed just in time by Cappy and Cahill as the 747 stabilizes. Hassan kills the pilots and damages the controls, before being shot and killed by Rat.
Despite his limited flying experience and poor flying technique, Grant takes control of the 747 and attempts a landing but
misses the approach
to
Dulles International Airport
. Grant recognizes the area surrounding his training airfield,
Frederick Field
and attempts to land the 747 there. With Jean's assistance, Grant successfully lands the airliner and the passengers are safely evacuated. Grant is saluted by Baker, Louie, Rat and Cappy for his leadership before being summoned to
the Pentagon
.
Cast
[
edit
]
- Kurt Russell
as Dr. David Grant, a consultant for US Army Intelligence
- Steven Seagal
as Lieutenant Colonel Austin Travis, US Army Special Forces
[3]
- Halle Berry
as Jean, Flight Attendant
- John Leguizamo
as Captain Carlos "Rat" Lopez, US Army Special Forces
- David Suchet
as Nagi Hassan / Al-Tar, Co-chief of the extremist organization
- Oliver Platt
as Dennis Cahill, Aeronautic Engineer
- Joe Morton
as First Sergeant Campbell "Cappy" Matheny, US Army Special Forces
- BD Wong
as Staff Sergeant Louie Jung, US Army Special Forces
- Len Cariou
as
Secretary of Defense
Charles White
- Whip Hubley
as Sergeant 1st Class Michael Baker, US Army Special Forces
- Andreas Katsulas
as Abu El-Sayed Jaffa, Chief of the extremist organization
- Mary Ellen Trainor
as Allison
- Marla Maples
as Nancy
- J. T. Walsh
as Senator Jason Mavros
- Nicholas Pryor
as Secretary of State Jack Douglas
- Ingo Neuhaus as "Doc", US Army Special Forces
- Todd Jefferies as Collins, US Army Special Forces
- Ilia Volok
as Chechen Thug
- Robert Apisa
as Jean-Paul Demou, sleeper terrorist and also a bomb triggerman
- Juan Fernandez
as London Bomber
- Magdalene St. Michaels as London Hostess (credited as Jayne Walters)
- William James Jones as Catman
- Charles Hallahan
as General Sarlow, US Army
- Richard Riehle
as
Air Marshal
George Edwards
- Eugene Roche
as Admiral Lewis
- Ken Jenkins
as General Wood
- Jay Tavare
as Nabill
- Shaun Toub
as Terrorist
- Christopher Maher
as Terrorist
- Ray Baker
as 747 Pilot
- Michael Milhoan
as 747 First Officer
Filming
[
edit
]
Principal photography
began on June 19 and ended on October 17, 1995.
Production
[
edit
]
Steven Seagal says that he was enticed to accept the unusual role of Austin Travis by a hefty salary, which amounted to around a million dollars per day spent on the shoot. He also found some satisfaction in knowing that his character's unexpected fate would shock the audience, and therefore did not regret taking the role.
[4]
Former Warner Bros. Vice President Bill Daly later stated Seagal agreed to the role in exchange for the studio forgiving him losing his director's salary due to going over-budget with his directorial debut
On Deadly Ground
.
[5]
Exterior shots of the Boeing 747 were done using models and two real aircraft.
[6]
Grant McCune Design
constructed two models for actual shooting, one model to test the rig, one complete lower half for closeups of the landing gear extension sequence, and one 1/12 scale nose section for the stealth docking sequence. Two models of the Remora were also made at 1/6 scale, one for the docking sequence with a motion controlled snorkel and articulated hatch and another for post dock sequences.
[7]
An ex-
Kuwait Airways
747-269BM belonging to
Kalitta Air
(registration N707CK) was featured in most of the in-flight shots,
[8]
[9]
while a
Corsair
747-121 (externally identical to the 747-200) formerly owned by
Pan Am
was used for closeups of the aircraft in the aftermath of the crash landing at the end. The latter aircraft was stored in the
Mojave Air and Space Port
in
Mojave, California
, after filming wrapped up and was subsequently scrapped in 1998.
[10]
The F-14s featured in the film came from the
VF-84
Jolly Rogers
squadron. This would be VF-84's last Hollywood appearance before disestablishment.
[11]
Reception
[
edit
]
Critical response
[
edit
]
On
Rotten Tomatoes
the film has an approval rating of 63% based on reviews from 41 critics, with an average rating of 6.30/10. The site's consensus states: "
Executive Decision
adheres entertainingly to classic action thriller formula, proving a genre outing doesn't need to win points for originality to be solidly effective."
[12]
On
Metacritic
the film has an approval rating of 62 out of 100, based on reviews from 20 critics.
[13]
Audiences polled by
CinemaScore
gave the film an average grade of "A?" on an A+ to F scale.
[14]
Leonard Maltin
called it "a tense, inventive thriller" which needed more editing.
[15]
Leonard Klady of
Variety
wrote, "The picture's logic may be a bit fast and loose, but its action-and-excitement quotient is top-notch."
[16]
Roger Ebert
rated it 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "a gloriously goofy mess of a movie" with several
plot holes
(e.g. smuggling a toxin into the country would likely be easier and just as effective as hijacking). Ebert praised the first-act
plot twist
of killing off the character played by Seagal, then a major Hollywood star: "I perked right up".
[17]
Accolades
[
edit
]
Halle Berry
earned a
Blockbuster Entertainment Award
for Favorite Actress - Adventure/Drama for her performance in the film in 1997.
Steven Seagal
earned a
Razzie Award
nomination for Worst Supporting Actor for his performance in the film but lost to
Marlon Brando
for
The Island of Dr. Moreau
.
[18]
Other versions
[
edit
]
The European theatrical version of the film was edited by the studio in order to remove reference to Islam. The original US version was the source of the DVD in that country, while the European version was used worldwide as the source for the Blu-ray HD master.
[19]
[20]
See also
[
edit
]
Ghost Squad
, a 2004
arcade game
from
Sega
that has a level set on
Air Force One
, similar to the plot of
Executive Decision
.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
"Executive Decision"
.
The Numbers
. Retrieved
2014-09-27
.
- ^
Gleiberman, Owen (March 26, 1996).
"Executive Decision"
.
Entertainment Weekly
.
- ^
"PLOT HOLES MAR THRILLING 'EXECUTIVE DECISION'
"
.
Deseret News
. 15 March 1996.
Steven Seagal, who is not billed in the opening credits
- ^
De Semlyen, Nick (March 2007).
"Lost Action Heroes: #1 Seagal"
(PDF)
.
Empire
. No. 213. London:
EMAP
.
- ^
Dettenmaier, Ethan.
"Why Seagal was killed in Exec Decision? Former WB VP Bill Daly & I remember our days w/'The Steven'
"
. Brigade-Radio-One
. Retrieved
16 June
2023
.
- ^
Norris, Guy; Wagner, Mark (1997).
Boeing 747: Design and Development Since 1969
. Wisconsin: Motorbooks International. p. 113.
ISBN
0760302804
.
- ^
Failes, I. (15 March 2021).
"The high-flying miniatures of 'Executive Decision', and where they are now"
. befores & afters.
- ^
Photo of N707CK during production
- ^
"N801KH Kitty Hawk Collateral Liquidating Trust Boeing 747-200(F)"
. Planespotters.net
. Retrieved
June 24,
2023
.
- ^
"N3293H Unknown Boeing 747-100"
. Planespotters.net
. Retrieved
June 24,
2023
.
- ^
Leone, D. (July 5, 2018).
"VF-84 Jolly Rogers Last Hurrah: filming the movie Executive Decision"
. The Aviation Geek Club
. Retrieved
June 24,
2023
.
- ^
"Executive Decision (1996)"
.
Rotten Tomatoes
. Retrieved
2022-02-22
.
- ^
"Executive Decision"
.
Metacritic
.
- ^
"Cinemascore"
. Archived from
the original
on 2018-12-20.
- ^
Maltin, Leonard (2014).
Leonard Maltin's 2015 Movie Guide
.
Penguin Books
.
ISBN
9780698183612
.
- ^
Klady, Leonard (1996-03-10).
"Review: Auds Likely to Decide in Favor of 'Executive'
"
.
Variety
. Retrieved
2014-09-27
.
- ^
Ebert, Roger
(1996-03-15).
"Executive Decision"
.
Chicago Sun-Times
. Retrieved
2014-09-27
.
- ^
Wilson, John.
"1996 Razzie Awards"
.
Golden Raspberry Awards
. Archived from
the original
on 2012-04-26
. Retrieved
2014-09-27
.
- ^
Gerald Wurm (2011-09-29).
"Executive Decision (Comparison: Intern. Blu-ray / European Version - US DVD)"
. Movie-Censorship.com
. Retrieved
2022-08-19
.
- ^
"Executive Decision Re-Edited Blu-ray Version (1996)"
.
External links
[
edit
]