Air Force One

In Wolfgang Petersen’s film the president was offered first to Kevin Costner, who turned it down for The Postman; the script then went to Harrison Ford. The aircraft in the exteriors is real: a Boeing 747-146 leased from Kalitta Air and repainted in presidential livery, while the interiors were built as sets. Much of the crew toured the real Air Force One beforehand, and the deputy press secretary was modelled on their guide; they were uneasy filming her execution. Yet the one person escape pod and the rear parachute ramp do not exist on the real aircraft. The suspense runs on invention rather than research, and what you track is who is behind which door. The music changed late. Randy Newman wrote the first score, Petersen judged it close to parody and brought in Jerry Goldsmith, who had twelve days to record a replacement; Joel McNeely wrote much of the second act, including the passages where the plane is fired on. The film was nominated for sound and film editing, and Titanic won both. A good fit if you enjoy tracking the geography inside one fuselage and can accept the escape pod as a rule of the film. Not for a viewer hoping to learn how the real presidential aircraft works.