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| Genre: | Comedy |
| Year: | 1990 |
| Rating: | R |
| Length: | 1 Hour 53 Minutes |
| Cast: | Roger Spottiswoode, Mel Gibson, Robert Downey Jr., Nancy Travis |
To Orson Welles, a motion picture studio was "the biggest electric train set a boy ever had to play with." To director Roger Spottiswoode, it's a model plane set, if the big-budget action comedy Air America is any indication. Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. play a couple of what-the-hell flyboys flying contraband to Laos during the Vietnam War. Gibson doesn't seem to care about anything but the "guts and glory" aspects of the job, but Downey has serious questions about the moral implications of their mission. When a Laotian general expresses more concern over the wellbeing of an opium shipment than the men who are risking life and limb to fly it in, Gibson comes around to Downey's way of thinking. By film's end, Gibson is stuck in one of those character-building dilemmas so common to films of this nature: Should he deliver his cache of weaponry, or should he dump it all to rescue a bunch of refugees? Inasmuch as one of the refugees is gorgeous USAID Nancy Travis, there's little doubt as to what course Gibson will eventually follow. Hal Erickson
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