This film is an adrenalin-pumping political thriller that doesn't let up from start to finish. And it is filled with one surprise after another.
A group of Islamic terrorists hijack an Athens-Washington, D.C., airplane with over 400 passengers on it. They want to engineer the release of one of their leaders. The head of an anti-terrorist think tank who has been monitoring their activities knows that they have on board a deadly nerve gas bomb. He joins a crack team of commandos in a highly complicated mission designed to secretly board the plane, defuse the bomb, wipe out the militants, and save the passengers.
Kurt Russell, Joe Morton, David Suchet, and Oliver Platt are superb in this high-voltage drama that relies more on creative thinking than it does on gun power.