Parents' Guide to Executive Decision

Tipped as a starry hot property upon its release in 1996, this aviation thriller unfortunately proves to be weighed down by some serious excess baggage. On board might be some big-name dramatic and action movie acting talent, but Executive Decision's first-class cast fail to charter much of a course through a script containing enough delays, contrivances, and plot holes to leave most viewers feeling jet-lagged. Director Stuart Baird is best known for his work as an editor on a fleet of big-budget blockbusters. But here he fails to connect disjointed moments of wise-cracking adventure, terrorist drama, and exposition via various computer screens and tech tools.

Pairing Russell's bespectacled intelligence agent with Steven Seagal's ruthless Green Beret as the heroes is one of several nice ideas that never really takes flight. Mainly because the movie's attempts to rise above the usual action movie cliches are quickly undone by its pre-9/11 Middle Eastern terrorists. These villains are rarely more than crudely sketched, with David Suchet doing his best to convey a threat despite being downgraded to less screen time than the bomb our heroes spend a couple of hours trying to locate and diffuse. Presumably Halle Berry's flight attendant character was included so that at least one female was cast in a role that influenced proceedings. But she too is largely passive and could understandably have been left feeling -- like the audience -- as though she'd been taken for a ride.