Bullet Points: Air Marshal
2023 was certainly the year of Nu Image here on Bulletproof Action, but I am here to tell you there’s going to be even more in 2024.
And our first Nu Image review of the New Year will be 2003’s Air Marshal starring Dean Cochran…
- What a Difference Two Years Makes: The movie begins in Libya. Brett Prescott (Dean Cochran, Target of Opportunity) is leading a Special Forces mission to capture a highly sought after terrorist, with explicit instructions to bring said terrorist back alive. The fact that Prescott stresses the alive part so vehemently was a red flag that this terrorist was not going to come back alive… The movie, after establishing that Brett Prescott was a Special Forces badass, jumps ahead two years to Eastern Europe. It is there where we catch up with the now Air Marshal Brett Prescott sitting at an outdoor cafe on the phone with his very pregnant wife, Tracy. Brett’s biggest concerns at the moment is debating with Tracy over what they are going to name their son and easing her fears that she will go into labor before Brett makes it back home to New York City. Brett will soon have a lot more to worry about…
- Trans Air International: There are some shady things going on behind the scenes as Brett prepares for his Air Marshal duties on the flight to New York City. Brett makes the cardinal mistake, after a quick briefing with airport security, of saying “Should be a safe flight”… I felt like it was going to be Libya all over again. We are introduced to some of the passengers on the flight, most notably is Senator Chambers (Tim Thomerson, Iron Eagle) and his daughter Maggie… Before I go any further I want to say that Maggie is easily the least likable character in the entire movie and this is a movie that features terrorists… Brothers, Jamal and Elijah (Eli Danker, Special Forces) are passengers on the plane and we will soon learn they are also in charge of the act of terror that is about to go down… Last but not least is Ricky, the unaccompanied minor/airplane enthusiast, who is on his way back home to New York City and his mother.
- True Colors: Once the CGI plane takes off and Jamal has had his fun pretending to be a former dot com billionaire and flirting with the insufferable Maggie, he excuses himself and threatens to kill one of the flight attendants, if she doesn’t get him inside the cockpit… Once inside he kills the co-pilot and threatens to do the same to the captain if he does not change the plane’s course. The experienced captain tries to pull a fast one on Jamal… which serves to piss off Jamal and also give Brett some indication that something is wrong… and moments later, when the rest of the terrorists on board reveal themselves, Brett springs into action and attempts to diffuse the situation quickly… but Jamal makes it clear they aren’t going to be playing by the western rules and he shoots one of his own men in order to take out Brett… they then put the gunned down Air Marshal back in his seat and put a blanket over his “dead” body.
- Fly in the Ointment: When the time is right, Brett is able to pull the old switcheroo and heads down to the cargo/mechanical area of the plane where he can cause all sorts of trouble for the terrorists and they’ll be none the wiser… most notably dumping 70% of their fuel and taking out a few of the bad guys along the way. Brett even manages to communicate with Washington D.C. and the military brass/bureaucrat that have been put in charge of dealing with this terrorist situation. But possibly more detrimental to the terror plot than Air Marshal Brett Prescott is the philosophical differences between Jamal and Elijah… Jamal wants to strike a blow for their cause and he is willing to die for it… Elijah on the other hand just wants the money and his greed eventually finds him helping Brett take control of the cockpit after Jamal has inserted himself as pilot before Jamal can crash the plane into a cruise ship
- False Finish: Where Air Marshal really shined for me was how it would keep teasing that the movie was about to wrap up, only to add more peril… we get not one but two emergency landing scenarios, we get a terrorist who sees his dream of being rich beyond his dream blow up via exploding helicopter… we get an unexpected villain and by the end I was wondering if Ricky was going to save the day since they definitely planted seeds early on in the movie.
Over the years here on the site and on The Bulletproof Podcast we have talked about how there are certain actors that were born to play bad guys. They just naturally look like action movie bad guys. The opposite can be said for Dean Cochran, who was born to play an action movie hero. If you were going to draw up an action hero, he would look like Dean Cochran. And Cochran’s Brett Prescott is the primary reason to book your flight with Air Marshal… you definitely want to see him win and get home to his wife in NYC.
I would have also liked to see Maggie Chambers get sucked out of the airplane when one of the windows breaks, but we don’t always get what we want, unless of course it is Bonus Bullet Points…
- Missed Opportunity: I would have loved a scene where Tim Thomerson was able to do his spot on Charles Bronson impersonation as Senator Chambers got into a verbal confrontation with Elijah that started with the Senator saying “Hey pockface!”
- Familiar Face: I mentioned that Brett Prescott is in communication with the military brass in Washington D.C. What I did not mention was who that military brass was. Frank Novak played General Watkins. I have seen Novak over the years in movies like The Force and Independence Day. But the first place I saw Frank Novak was on an episode of WWF Prime Time Wrestling, where Bobby “The Brain” Heenan conned his way onto a yacht and Novak played the ship’s captain, Captain Novak.
- Directed By: Alain Jakubowicz was the director of Air Marshal. It has been said that Nu Image has Cannon blood running through its veins and the reason for that is guys like Alain Jakubowicz. Alain edited movies for Cannon like Penitentiary III and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. Alain was the post-production-supervisor on some Cannon classics like American Ninja 2, Masters of the Universe and Death Wish 4.
