Air America

When "Billy" (Robert Downey Jr.) loses his pilot's licence after a lively misdemeanour, he finds himself working in war-torn Laos with the team at "Air America". This is a CIA-backed operation consisting of a disparate bunch of pilots whose job it is to fly in supplies to local villages. It's there that he meets "Gene" (Mel Gibson) and also where he realises that not only is it pretty dangerous out there, but that his paymasters are into the narcotics trade in quite a big way and, to make matters even more dodgy - one of his colleagues goes in for some illicit gun-running too. It does move…

I have a special love for this film, if for no other reason that the bulk of my college experience was spent on the cold war, the alphabet soup of PBSUCCESS, MKULTRA, JMWAVE, PAPERCLIP, COLDFEET, MKOFTEN, The Phoenix Program, ARTICHOKE, and my favorite (just because of how bad it sounds) Midnight Climax. So a comedy about Air America was absolutely priceless. And, given that I am not one of those history nuts that cares about historical accuracy I can still sit back and enjoy something like this. I mean, honestly, so long as it's not a complete and total re-write... Hollywood can take it's…

Entertaining enough action-war movie thanks to the charisma of both Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. The film also has some solid action scenes and direction, to go along with Roger Deakins's cinematography. From what I read about this, doesn't seem like many had fun making the movie, including Deakins and Downey. Still, I found it enjoyable even if Gibson's character shift didn't felt surface level. **3.0/5**

"Air America" is an expertly crafted film with cohesion being the top priority throughout. It perfectly balances some unassuming action sequences with the more realistic aspects of the film to create a fast paced and fascinating motion picture experience which successfully holds your interest principally because it is based upon a true story and like many such stories - especially if it is interested in being honest to at least some degree about the events upon which it is based - it isn't afraid of dragging some potentially embarrassing realities into the unforgiving light of day and this…