Stuart Baird's Executive Decision: Action, Stealth, Sneaking and Shooting

Executive Decision holds a wholesome and satisfying little piece of cinematic payback. In what other movie can you witness Steven Seagal’s body fly out of the top of a plane in the first half hour of film? Aside from that little gold nugget, Executive Decision is a smart thriller that was largely ignored when released, and whose legacy is predominantly its eerie similarities with the 9/11 tragedy.

Executive Decision is a movie about terrorism. David Grant (Kurt Russel) is a government worker whose job is to help track down dangerous terrorist cells throughout the world. Unfortunately for him and the rest of the United States, a renegade Middle Eastern cell has hijacked a 747 jet and held hundreds of civilians hostage. What is even more disturbing is Grant’s theory that the real motive of the terrorists is not to gain ransom from these hostages, but to launch a strike against the United States. 

In order to make sure that if in fact that plane is carrying a chemical weapon, the government sends a crack squad of commandos into action. Using an experimental aircraft that will allow them to enter to plane, something goes wrong and the squad finds itself marooned in the cargo holds of the hijacked plane. Now it’s a race against time to both take the plane and diffuse the weapon.

The movie relies more on stealth and smarts than it does on straightforward machine gun action sequences. The squad cannot take control of the plane for fear that if there is a weapon on board, it could be detonated if the terrorists feel their mission is compromised. Thus, they must creep through the cargo holds and compartments of the plane to survey and gather information about the terrorists. 

The frailty of the compartments and the need for the squad members to conceal their presence lends a suspenseful tension to Executive Decision. It is refreshing to see an action movie that lauds cleverness over rash action. And a welcome by-product of this reliance on subtlety is a pervasive fear that any one of these men could be discovered at any moment.