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(This review contains spoilers. Consider yourself warned.)

Prior to Executive Decision's release, Aikido superstar Steven Seagal had churned out quite a few unorthodox action movies -- fair enough, most of them were bad, but everyone kind of knew who he was. So, in 1996, a time when Seagal's chubby face was used heavily in the advertising for his latest movie with Kurt Russell, we began thinking that this was just another opportunity for him to kick some serious arse, right? Right, but how wrong our pre-conceived thoughts were.

Actually, Steven Seagal ends up dying in this film rather early, before the main action has even begun. It's actually quite a pathetic state of affairs, and you begin to wonder why the hell he was cast at all. The first time I watched this film I thought the whole death thing was a joke and the seemingly-invincible action hero would later pop up towards the end of the film and save the day as he normally would do. However, it didn't happen.

Aside from the mystery behind Seagal's casting, though, Executive Decision is actually quite an enjoyable film in that it manages to effectively build and maintain a fair amount of tension for its duration.

Russell stars as the main protagonist, David Grant, an intelligence expert on terrorism, who is assigned to help disarm the bad guys who have hijacked an airliner on its way to Washington, D.C. With his team of U.S. Commandos (Joe Morton, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt and B.D. Wong, all playing their roles effectively) they manage to sneak on board the plane -- in a heart-pounding, if completely ridiculous scene -- and attempt to infiltrate Islamic extremist Nagi Hassan (David Suchet), who plans to denote a bomb over U.S. airspace.

Executive Decision is an uncomplicated thriller, but not quite as ridiculous as you'd expect of a film with Steven Seagal's name on the bill. With the torch passed to Russell to save the day early on, this becomes an edge-of-the-seat disaster-threatening film. We watch on as one half of the team attempts to defuse a bomb for a number of minutes with various tools, while the other half attempts to make contact with a flight attendant (Halle Berry) and avoid terrorist suspicion. The whole mission is a race against the clock.

Director Stuart Baird is notable for working on Demolition Man and The Last Boy Scout, while producer Joel Silver and screenwriters John Thomas and Jim Thomas were the team behind Predator in 1987. But despite these popular action movies being on the CVs of the working team, this film should not be confused as part of the same genre. So ignore your preconceptions and the seemingly-unattached first twenty mins that star Steven Seagal, and enjoy Executive Decision for what it is: A suspenseful, stealth-oriented thriller that's just as relevant today with its Islamic extremism as it was back then.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2009.