Air Force One gives us some fantasy-land material, but to its credit the material is much more believable than Independence Day. While Bill Pullman's antics in Independence Day were greeted with smirks by many members of the audience, Harrison Ford delivers a convincing portrait of the president as a butt-kicking action hero. I'll be interested to see how people from other countries react to Air Force One. I can't help but think some audiences outside of the U.S. will find this movie to be absolutely ludicrous. But for American audiences long accustomed to getting pushed around by the little countries of the world, Air Force One will seem like a revelation. (Our readers outside of the U.S.: please let us know what you think of this movie: e-mail.)

For the first hour, Air Force One plays out as a fairly conventional thriller. The filmmakers were burdened with the oh-so-familiar scenes where we get the demands of the hijackers/kidnappers. The biggest surprise the filmmakers can deliver is to give us Glenn Close as the Vice President. Close and Dean Stockwell as the Defense Secretary must slog through hackneyed dialog: "You have to buy us some more time!" Close says. "What are the air scenarios?" says Stockwell. The hijackers threaten to execute one hostage every half hour until their demands are met while Close holds press conferences and discusses everything we already know. These scenes recite the obvious and do little more than let us relax a little while Ford tries to figure out how to retake the airplane.

Meanwhile, Gary Oldman rants as the mastermind behind the hijacking. Oldman seems to love bad guy roles like this one. Just recently he played the head baddie in The Fifth Element. He's risking becoming a parody of himself if he keeps playing bad guy roles much longer. But in Air Force One he backs away from the histrionics that have previously distinguished his performances--and he's all the better for it, actually managing some subtlety in a performance that easily could have become cartoonish.

While the movie's first hour plays out as relatively ordinary stuff, eventually the filmmakers pull a few surprises and give us a president with some witty, resourceful moves. And we even get some comedy, such as a scene where Ford must try to figure out how to use a cellular phone so he can call for help. He holds a rifle in one hand and a cellular phone user's guide in the other. The movie also gives us the interesting situation of Ford as a president who refuses to bow to the demands of terrorists--but now his family is held hostage. What can he do but break his own rules?

Wolfgang Petersen, who directed the amazing Das Boot before moving to Hollywood (where he helmed In the Line of Fire and Outbreak), knows suspense. Air Force One contains several incredible scenes, including a stunning air rescue attempt with soliders zipping back and forth between airplanes by sliding along a wire cable.

Even with the well-handled suspense, Air Force One always feels like a big pre-fabricated movie, the kind of project created by producers sitting around a big dinner table at a fancy Los Angeles restaurant. I'm sure they'll be congratulating themselves all the way to the bank, for this movie delivers the action goods and manages to be patriotic at the same time. But the nicest move of all is the casting of Philip Baker Hall. He doesn't show up until two thirds of the way into this movie, but when he does it feels like they've called in the ghost of Nixon to help remedy the situation. (Hall played Richard Nixon in Robert Altman's Secret Honor.)