Executive Decision Movie Review

For those action film fans who think that Steven Seagal is indestructible, I highly recommend you see Executive Decision, a cheese-o-rama of an action flick that gives Seagal seventh billing and a quick ride to Action Hero Heaven.

No, this is not a "Steven Seagal Movie." It's a "Kurt Russell Movie"--the New Kurt Russell, the tough-yet-vulnerable Kurt Russell, the Kurt Russell a la Bruce Willis-type with whom we're about to be deluged, like it or not (answer: probably not).

The story of Executive Decision is easy to boil down: another rehashing of Die Hard, on an airplane for the first time since Passenger 57. This outing, Seagal, Russell, John Leguizamo, and Oliver Platt head a team of scrappy commandos and less-warlike people who board a 747 in mid-flight to stop a nerve gas bomb from detonating over Washington and wiping out the Eastern seaboard. This, apparently, is what terrorists do for kicks.

It could've been fun. It's been done, yes, but a fresh take on the hostage story can be exciting, and at times, Executive Decision is edge-of-your-seat material. The problem, and it shouldn't exist, is that for the entire first hour of this film, it is the most hideously boring, lifeless, repetitive, derivative, and pointless bit of celluloid you can imagine. Clocking in at a whopping 2 hours, 20 minutes, this picture had plenty which could have been cut out but wasn't, resulting in a whole lot of catching up to do in the last hour.

Thank God that the catch-up is pretty fun--but still, putting the audience to sleep at the beginning of the movie is a violation of the cardinal rule of action filmmaking.

If you're wondering about the acting, dialogue, etc.--don't. They're all typically cheese-infested (Seagal's character is actually, and I am not making this up, named "Austin Travis"). Instead, if you go to Executive Decision, sit back and try to enjoy the explosions and high-tech gadgetry. But more importantly, try to get there late.

The joke for this official Executive Decision button is so obvious that I'm not even going to say it...