Easily one of my personal favourite "light-hearted action movies"...Air America takes place in Laos, circa 1969, and follows the exploits of a band of roughneck pilots working for the company of the film's title, flying dangerous cargo drop missions in the unfriendly skies. Billy (Robert Downey Jr) is recruited from his job as a traffic helicopter pilot to join Air America. As he wants to be "down in the action, not up above it" he takes the job and so meets Gene Ryack (Mel Gibson) the unofficial head of the bunch, who is as he puts it an "adrenaline junkie".
While the historical accuracy and believability of the story is questionable, that's not why we watch these films, is it? This is a great action movie, with some REAL aerial stuntwork and no bluescreen or CGI, some great one liners, some awesome location photography and some decent humour:
"How often do you guys go on a bender like this?" "Oh, this is not a bender. This is just night-time!"
Roger Spottiswoode has made some remarkably good action films in his time, light, non-gory violence with some humanity and a decent storyline to boot. He did the wonderful "Turner and Hooch" a year before this, and a year before that did "Deadly Pursuit" (or "Shoot to Kill" i think it was called in the US), and later directed Arnie in "The 6th Day". I enjoy all those movies, find them tense, exciting and lots of fun as Friday-nite-popcorn-flicks.
Finally, two things that I admire about this film are the fact there is no cheesy love story thrown in just for the sake of having a love interest for one of the male leads. And the final message delivered in the films closing scenes when Gene ditches his (very lucrative) weapons cache in favour of taking on refugees fleeing a warzone. Great message. Great stuff.
While the historical accuracy and believability of the story is questionable, that's not why we watch these films, is it? This is a great action movie, with some REAL aerial stuntwork and no bluescreen or CGI, some great one liners, some awesome location photography and some decent humour:
"How often do you guys go on a bender like this?" "Oh, this is not a bender. This is just night-time!"
Roger Spottiswoode has made some remarkably good action films in his time, light, non-gory violence with some humanity and a decent storyline to boot. He did the wonderful "Turner and Hooch" a year before this, and a year before that did "Deadly Pursuit" (or "Shoot to Kill" i think it was called in the US), and later directed Arnie in "The 6th Day". I enjoy all those movies, find them tense, exciting and lots of fun as Friday-nite-popcorn-flicks.
Finally, two things that I admire about this film are the fact there is no cheesy love story thrown in just for the sake of having a love interest for one of the male leads. And the final message delivered in the films closing scenes when Gene ditches his (very lucrative) weapons cache in favour of taking on refugees fleeing a warzone. Great message. Great stuff.