#114 | Air Force One: Cruise Control

Listen to our Air Force One episode on:

If you’ve ever thought to yourself ‘Sure, Die Hard was great – but what it really needed was to take place mid-air and feature the President of the United States ziplining between two planes’, then Air Force One is likely to be your kind of movie. Profoundly ridiculous and often painfully of its time, Wolfgang Petersen’s 1997 hit is nevertheless riotously entertaining from start to finish – largely thanks to the presence of the always watchable Harrison Ford.

Like all the best movie stars, Ford has an ability to sell patent nonsense like this with just the right level of seriousness. He’s backed up by Gary Oldman, creating yet another of his trademark heavily accented villains as the Kazakh terrorist who hijacks the presidential plane. His character spends much of the movie verbally sparring with Glenn Close, who injects a note of Oscar-endorsed prestige – and justifies our discussion of the movie this week – as the put-upon Vice President struggling to hold things together from the ground.

In this week’s podcast, we discuss highly questionable political techniques, play a productive game of spot-the-action-movie-cliche, and come up with a mobile app idea that we’re definitely going to be crowdfunding in the near future. We also pitch some updated sequel ideas for this film that include a House of Cards crossover and some very creative use of a rhyming dictionary…

You can find this week’s episode for free download and streaming on all good podcasting platforms. Just follow the links at the top of this blog post or search ‘Beyond The Box Set’ on your preferred app. Make sure you hit subscribe to receive a new episode of our show every Friday morning.

You can also connect with us via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, or become a VIP listener on Patreon to access a wide variety of bonus content and incentives for as little as $2 per month. Finally, we’re a proud founding member of the Pave Media Network, helping independent podcasters to build their audience and connect with other creatives.

Next week, we move on from our Glenn Close mini-season with a look at a classic performance from one of her biggest Hollywood rivals. Until then, happy listening and GET OFF OUR PLANE!