Executive Decision (1996)
Directed by Stuart Baird
Terrorists hijack a 747 inbound to Washington D.C., demanding the release of their imprisoned leader. Intelligence expert David Grant suspects another reason and he is soon the reluctant member of a special assault team that is assigned to intercept the plane and hijackers.
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What critics compared Executive Decision to
One of the bigger-name crew members does get to play (spoiler alert, sort of) a reprise of the Steven Seagal role in “ Executive Decision .”
He’s also directed Executive Decision and U.S. Marshals, both of which are perfectly entertaining movies.
Violent, funny and featuring a fiercely committed performance from Betty Gilpin, Zobel makes the best use of casting since something like Executive Decision (1996)—meaning the film immediately asserts its unpredictable pattern of who will live and who might survive by playing with our expectations.
One much-teased bit in the finale seems to borrow a beat from the 1990s action movie Executive Decision.
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For starters, our hero is a loud, obnoxious jerk that few people would want to spend any amount of time with and I fear that Butler embodies that characteristic to a T—you spend the first half of the movie hoping that the film is going to pull an “ Executive Decision ” and knock him out early so that the real and actually likable hero can come in and save the day.
Executive Decision was Die Hard on a plane.
He’s Steven Segal in Executive Decision, that’s how quick it is.
In short, it may not be original, in the sense that Non-Stop’s story has been trumped by the likes of the aforementioned Executive Decision and, er, reality, but it grips and that, not plausibility, is all we ask of a thriller.
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With the Die Hard series recently cloning itself with execrable effect, it’s almost reassuring to see someone else at it once again – an addition to the ‘Die Hard on a/in the…’ sub-genre that includes old favourites like Under Siege, Cliffhanger, Passenger 57 and, er, Executive Decision.