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Rated: R; Genres: Action/Adventure, Suspense; With: Halle Berry, Kurt Russell and Steven Seagal
C+
By Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is a film critic for EW

EXECUTIVE DECISION (R) In this bluntly impersonal Die Hard clone, an Islamic fundamentalist (David Suchet) hijacks a 747 to Washington, D.C., stashing enough poison nerve gas on board to kill everyone on the Eastern seaboard. There's an exciting sequence in which a U.S. task force, led by Kurt Russell and Steven Seagal, flies under the jet in a stealth craft, which gets attached to the larger plane. But once Russell and his crew have smuggled themselves on board, they start fiddling with computer screens and video monitors, with black cords and red cords -- we may as well be watching some special action edition of This Old House. It doesn't help that actors as lively as John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, and Joe Morton are reduced to walking flowcharts, or that the terrorists are portrayed as if they were the staff of the world's meanest falafel establishment. Executive Decision doesn't take you anywhere you haven't been, and it doesn't try to. C+


Posted Mar 29, 1996
 

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