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Air America

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5.8/10 • 603

1990-08-101h 52m

ActionAdventureComedyDrama

The few. The proud. The totally insane.

Air America was the CIA's private airline operating in Laos during the Vietnam War, running anything and everything from soldiers to foodstuffs for local villagers. After losing his pilot's license, Billy Covington is recruited, and ends up in the middle of a bunch of lunatic pilots, gun-running by his friend Gene Ryack, and opium smuggling by his own superiors.

Directors
Roger Spottiswoode
Editors
John Bloom

Top Billed Cast

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  1. Mel Gibson

    Mel Gibson

    Gene Ryack

  2. Robert Downey Jr.

    Robert Downey Jr.

    Billy Covington

  3. Nancy Travis

    Nancy Travis

    Corinne Landreaux

  4. Ken Jenkins

    Ken Jenkins

    Major Donald Lemond

  5. David Marshall Grant

    David Marshall Grant

    Rob Diehl

  6. Lane Smith

    Lane Smith

    Senator Davenport

  7. Art LaFleur

    Art LaFleur

    Jack Neely

  8. Ned Eisenberg

    Ned Eisenberg

    Pirelli

  9. Marshall Bell

    Marshall Bell

    O.V.

Reviews2

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CinemaSerf Avatar

CinemaSerf

Nov 14, 2022

6/10

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 along quickly enough, but the whole thing has a rather comic book feel to it. The writing is poor, the themes repeat themselves once too often and there is little chemistry from anyone on screen as the adventures rather lamely bumble along accompanied by a medicare AOR-style soundtrack. To be fair, it looks like Gibson is having some fun and it's always nice to see Burt Kwouk demonstrating just how little versatility he had as an actor - always looking perplexed, but otherwise all this is missing is Charlie Sheen.

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Status
Released
Original Language
English
Budget
$35,000,000.00
Revenue
$57,661,269.00
Keywords
vietnam warcentral intelligence agency (cia)airplanedrug smugglingrefugee camppilotlaosdrugs1960s