50 Greatest Action Movies Of All Time

21. Air Force One (1997)

Crank 2
Columbia Pictures

Harrison Ford plays the most bad-ass President in cinema history in Wolfgang Petersen's tightly-crafted blockbuster, a movie that quite happily acknowledges the ridiculousness of its premise in order to create a crowd-pleasing popcorn movie.

Petersen slowly ratchets up the tension as Ford's President Marshall engages in a game of cat-and-mouse with the Russian hijackers led by Gary Oldman's memorable villain, before the third act escalates into some spectacular action sequences that overcome the holes in the plot, and, of course, provide one of the genre's greatest payoff lines.

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