Air Force One (film)
1997 film directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Air Force One is a 1997 American political action thriller film directed and co-produced by Wolfgang Petersen and written by Andrew W. Marlowe. Starring Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, Xander Berkeley, William H. Macy, Dean Stockwell, Paul Guilfoyle and Jürgen Prochnow, the film follows Air Force One being hijacked by a group of terrorists who demand the release of their country's imprisoned dictator and the president's attempt to rescue everyone on board by retaking his plane.
Air Force One premiered in Century City on July 21, 1997 and was released by Sony Pictures Releasing on July 25, 1997 in the United States and Canada, with Buena Vista International releasing in other territories. The film was a box office success and received mostly positive critical reviews. It became the fifth highest-grossing film of 1997, earning $315.2 million worldwide against an $85 million budget. It also received two Academy Award nominations for Best Sound and Best Film Editing, losing both awards to Titanic.
Plot
A joint operation between American and Russian special forces captures General Ivan Radek, the dictator of a rogue neo-Soviet regime in Kazakhstan that retained its nuclear weapons, threatening war. Three weeks later, U.S. president James Marshall attends a diplomatic dinner in Moscow, during which he praises the operation and warns the United States will not negotiate with terrorists. Marshall and his entourage, including his wife Grace and daughter Alice, and several of his cabinet and advisers, prepare to return home on Air Force One. Six Radek loyalists disguised as journalists, led by Egor Korshunov, board the plane.
“Air Force One (film)” enters the record as 1997 film directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Force, film and directed can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q407184. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Air Force One (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.