History Film / ExecutiveDecision

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: Averted. Cahill does suggest trying to bluff Hassan down by revealing they know about the gas (which isn’t a ocmpletle DirtyCoward move but is still a bit desperate) only to be told it won’t work.

* ImmuneToBullets: About half the cast. The Sky Marshall takes several rounds and survives long enough to be taken to hospital. The BigBad gets [[MoreDakka More Dakka'ed]] to near death, yet is able to get up and take out the pilots. Rat gets shot in the back with little more effect than being knocked unconscious for around thirty seconds, though it's likely he had a bulletproof vest on.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: In the middle of arguing during the Remora's interception flight, Travis argues with Grant about [[{{Jerkass}} the hostility he's been showing the latter so far]] and Grant asks: "if you don't want me on this mission, why did you brought me along?" and Travis sarcasstically asks: "who's gonna save the day? You?" [[spoiler:Huh, [[DecoyProtagonist about that]], Colonel...]]

** A second, brief non-antagonistic example is Secretary of State Douglas. He’s concerned with the president looking bad if they shoot down the plane whether it has gas on board or not. Although he limits this to fretting and doesn’t actually tries to stop White.

* ForgottenFallenFriend: Happens to [[spoiler:Travis]], who's barely mentioned for the rest of the film after his death.

* WeHardlyKnewYe: Doc, of Travis's team, who would have administered the nerve gas onboard, and Allison the flight attendant.

* XanatosGambit: If not for the soldiers Hassan would have either destroyed the east coast (whether or not Jaffa was freed) or been shot down in a way that would have been impossible to prove he had never gas or would have crashed, finishing the administration. Unusually for the trope it's unclear if he'd seriously considered the second alternative.

** Senator Mavros, who is among the passengers, tries to defuse the situation because if he manages to do so, his aide tells him, he will obtain PR brownie points that he could ride all the way into a presidential ticket. [[spoiler:Jaffa blows his head off while they are talking to the Pentagon to make an example of how determined he is.]]

* DisposablePilot: zigzagged. The Remora's pilot survives. The airline pilots make it [[spoiler: to the last fifteen minutes, but ultimately fall victim to this trope to let Grant show off his ChekovsSkill]]. All three are also BadassPilot to a realistic extent.

--> [[spoiler: Travis]].: *You* are!

* HopeSpot: the pilots regaining control of the plane before we see Hassan's NotQuiteDead.

* SuicideAttack: Hassan's original intention.

* RedeemingReplacement: [[spoilers: Rat, not that Travis was particularly bad, but Rat is less hostile to Grant]].

CasualDangerDialogue: there's quite a bit between the commandos as they head to intercept the plane, although it lessens once they're onboard.

* CommunicationsExpert: Baker. One great concern he brings out is that the team's long-range communications equipment [[spoiler:went down with the ''Remora'']] so they can't reach the Pentagon, and he later helps Grant hotwire the plane's running lights to warn the escort planes that the team is onboard and give them five more minutes to try to take the terrorists down before they shoot the plane.

* DisposablePilot: zigzagged. The Remora's pilot survives. The airline pilots make it [[spoilers: to the last fifteen minutes, but ultimately fall victim to this trope to let Grant show off his ChekovsSkill]]. All three are also BadassPilots to a realistic extent.

* FalseReassurances: Hassan telling Senator Mavros that he'll keep his offer to negotiate in mind.

** Cahill is a straighter example, although he remains a {{non-action guy}}.

* UntriedUntestedUsedAnyway: Zigzagged: Cahill’s Remora is tested, just not for quite those circumstances and while it doesn’t work perfectly it does get them on there.

* The WorldsExpertOnGettingKilled: [[spoilers: Travis is the main authority in dealing with hijacked planes but is killed fast. This is downplayed and justified though; Travis was an authority on re-taking planes on the ground and dies boarding one in mid-air (something out of his element) while still being able to pull a HeroicSacrifice, and those of his men who make it aboard do carry about the mission successfully without any of them being killed.]]

* {{Action prologue}}: Travis’s raid, the movie itself wastes less time setting up the die hard scenario than most, as within about ten minutes after prologue, the the plane is hijacked.

* {{Awesome by analysis}}: Grant figuring out Hassan’s plan.

* {{Badass in a nice suit}}: Grant, mocked/lampshaded when he meets Travis’s team.

BigDamnHeroes: The air marshall nonfatal shooting Hassan in the back. A non-action version comes from Cappy stopping them from cutting the wrong wire.

** Also Louie, who isn't a medical, stabling Cappy with duct tape.
** {{communications expert}}: Baker.
* {{cool old guy}}: secretary of Defense White.
* CoolPlane: The Remora.

* [[spoiler:DeadStarWalking: Travis, played by Creator/StevenSeagal, doesn't makes it past the first act]].
* [[spoiler:DecoyProtagonist: Colonel Travis. Played by Creator/StevenSeagal, biggest badass of his team, he took the failure of the prologue's mission way too much to heart and spends most of the time around Dr. Grant (the man who provided the mission's intelligence) either full-on confrontational or visibly (and very barely) holding back contempt (setting up a trust-building arc), the marketing of course pitched him as one of the big heroes... nope, he doesn't even makes it into the plane. Rat ends up in command and he spends a good chunk of the runtime visibly struggling with this, including trying to trust Grant]].

* {{Friendly sniper}}: Louie is an unsuaully short distance version of this.

* HandicappedBadass: Cappy [[spoiler: after his neck injury]]

* {{In the back}}: the air Marshall does a heroic version to Hassan as he’s about to shoot Grant. Then a wounded Hassan does this to Rat. In both cases it’s not fatal.

* {{Inservice Rivalry}}:
Baker (after the Navy pilots recognize their morse code)-->I take back every rust-pickin', squid-hatin' thing I've ever said about swabbies!
* JerkAss: Whether or not the mission being done late means the intelligence was a bit faulty (the gas had already been moved) and whether or not this led to one of his soldiers being killed (that was Rat's fault, though), the reality is that Travis is ''way'' too confrontational all of the time he's around Grant.
{{ Know when to fold 'em}}: Averted. Cahill does suggest trying to bluff Hassan down by revealing they know about the gas (which isn’t a ocmpletle DirtyCoward move but is still a bit desperate) only to be told it won’t work.* {{A lighter shade of black}}: Jaffa, compared to Hassan.

* {{Mauve shirt}}: the copilot who went down, saw them, stayed quiet, had some neat lines when the plane was nearly shot down by the air force and helped keep the plane from crashing after the ExplosiveDecompression.
.* MundaneSolution: The bomb is "defused" not with all the high-tech gear the soldiers brought on board, but rather by the simple expedient of thrusting a [[RockBeatsLaser plastic swizzle-stick between two electrical contacts]], thus preventing the detonator from firing.
* NonActionGuy: Dr. Grant, Dennis Cahill even more so.

* {{Not quite the right thing}}: invoked when Grant is able to persuade Rat that attacking before they have much done on the bomb won’t keep it from going off (although as Rat points out even if they were blown up attacking at that point would save Washington).

* {{redeeming replacement}}: [[spoilers: Rat, not that Travis was particularly bad, but Rat is less hostile to Grant]].
* RightManInTheWrongPlace: Dr. Grant
* {{Reasonable authority figure}}: White, the secretary of defense. He listens to Grant quickly and believes his theory, wants an alternative to shooting down the plane and seeks one in Cahill but also values Travis’s opinion about whether or not it’s worth trying. When the team is assumed lost he then calls in planes to shoot them down, but with clear regret, and while waiting until the last minute. Also Rat, who proves much more accommodating to Grant and works with him well compared to Travis.* RedHerring: There is a terrorist sleeper agent hiding among the passengers with a remote detonator to the bomb. The team thinks that one passenger who is acting suspiciously is said sleeper, but it turns out that he's actually a diamond smuggler.

* {{Soft-spoken sadist}}: Hassan.

* SuitWithVestedInterests: Senator Mavros, who is among the passengers, tries to defuse the situation because if he manages to do so, his aide tells him, he will obtain PR brownie points that he could ride all the way into a presidential ticket. [[spoiler:Jaffa blows his head off while they are talking to the Pentagon to make an example of how determined he is.]]
** A second, brief non-antagonistic example is Secretary of State Douglas. He’s concerned with the president looking bad if they shoot down the plane whether it has gas on board or not. Although he limtis this to fretting and doesn’t actually try to stop White.

* {{Untried, untested, used anyway}}: zigzagged, Cahill’s Remora is tested, just not for quite those circumstances and while it doesn’t work perfectly it does get them on there.
* {{villainous BSOD}}: Hassan doesn't take the reveal that his bomb has ben found and disarmed well.
* {{we hardly knew ye}}: Doc, of Travis's team, who would have administered the nerve gas onboard, and Allison the flight attendant.

{{ The World's greatest expert on getting killed}}: [[spoilers: Travis is the main authority in dealing with hijacked planes but is killed fast. This is downplayed and justified though; Travis was an authority on re-taking planes on the ground and dies boarding on in the air (something out of his element) while still being able to pull a heroic sacrifice, and those of his men who make it aboard do carry about the mission successfully without any of them being killed.]]
* {{Xanatos gambit}}: if not for the soldiers Hassan would have either destroyed the east coast (whether or not Jaffa was freed) or been shot down in a way that would have been impossible to prove he had never gas or would have crashed, finishing the administration. Unusually for the trope it's unclear if he'd seriously considered the second alternative.
* YouAreInCommandNow: Rat.

* BoomHeadshot: How [[spoiler:Senator Mavros]] dies.

* MundaneSolution: The bomb is "defused" not with all the high-tech gear the soldiers brought on board, but rather by the simple expedient of thrusting a [[RockBeatsLaser plastic swizzle-stick between two electrical contacts]], thus preventing the detonator from firing.

* RedHerring: There is a terrorist sleeper agent hiding among the passengers with a remote detonator to the bomb. The team thinks that one passenger who is acting suspiciously is said sleeper, but it turns out that he's actually a diamond smuggler.

** Dennis Cahill, the engineer whose role on the mission was supposed to end the moment the team boarded the plane, is the one who defuses the bomb when Doc (the bomb specialist) becomes incapacitated.

* UnspokenPlanGuarantee: The moment Travis explains how the retaliation plan is going to go (get inside the plane, locate bomb and terrorists, apply sleep gas on passenger cabin and defuse bomb, land plane, Cahill and Grant are to stay in the Remora and the latter is there only to provide intel to Travis's team by radio) you just know that it's not going to happen.

* SuitWithVestedInterests: Senator Mavros tries to defuse the situation because if he manages to do so, his aide tells him, he will obtain PR brownie points that he could ride all the way into a presidential ticket. [[spoiler:Jaffa blows his head off while they are talking to the Pentagon to make an example of how determined he is.]]

''Executive Decision'' is a 1996 action film, directed by Stuart Baird (his directorial debut) and starring Creator/KurtRussell, Creator/HalleBerry, Creator/DavidSuchet, Creator/JohnLeguizamo, Creator/JoeMorton, Creator/OliverPlatt, and Creator/StevenSeagal.

''Executive Decision'' is a 1996 action film, directed by Stuart Baird (his directorial debut) and starring Creator/KurtRussell, Creator/HalleBerry, Creator/DavidSuchet, Creator/JohnLeguizamo, Creator/JoeMorton, Creator/BDWong, Oliver Platt, and Creator/StevenSeagal.

* SuitWithVestedInterests: The Senator among the passengers tries to defuse the situation because if he manages to do so, his aide tells him, he will obtain PR brownie points that he could ride all the way into a presidential ticket. [[spoiler:Jaffa blows his head off while they are talking to the Pentagon to make an example of how determined he is.]]

''Executive Decision'' is a 1996 action film, directed by Stuart Baird (his directorial debut) and starring Creator/KurtRussell, Creator/HalleBerry, Creator/DavidSuchet, Creator/JohnLeguizamo, Creator/JoeMorton, and Creator/StevenSeagal.

''Executive Decision'' is a 1996 action film, directed by Stuart Baird (his directorial debut) and starring Creator/KurtRussell, Creator/HalleBerry, Creator/DavidSuchet, Creator/JohnLeguizamo and Creator/StevenSeagal.

** Grant wears a US Naval Academy class ring, so he already had taken some levels, being a former naval (we think) officer.

** Dennis Cahill, the engineer who's role on the mission was supposed to end the moment the team boarded the plane, is the one who defuses the bomb when Doc (the bomb specialist) becomes incapacitated.

* ActionFilmQuietDramaScene: To the pint where the majority of the film is a very tense drama; most of the action comes from events like the hijacking, special forces boarding the plane, attempting to defuse the bomb, and [[BigBad Hasan]] threatening and shooting people, to the point where [[spoiler: the terrorists don't even know the special forces are ''on board the plane'' until the action climax]].

* TakingYouWithMe: Jaffa uses his chance for a LastBreathBullet to empty his machine gun into the cockpit and kill the pilots, hoping the crash will set off the bomb.

* [[spoiler:DeadStarWalking: Travis]].
* [[spoiler:DecoyProtagonist: Travis]].

* EveryoneKnowsMorse: In this case, US Navy fighter pilots do.