Executive Decision
Executive Decision is a 1996 American action thriller film directed by Stuart Baird in his directorial debut. It stars Kurt Russell, Steven Seagal, Halle Berry, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, Joe Morton, David Suchet and B.D. Wong. It depicts the rescue of an airliner hijacked by terrorists, by a small team placed on the plane in mid-flight. The film was released in the United States on March 15, 1996 and grossed $122 million against a $55 million budget.
Plot
Lieutenant Colonel Austin Travis leads an unsuccessful Special Forces black ops raid on a Chechen mafia safe house in Trieste, Italy, to recover a stolen Soviet nerve agent, DZ-5. Three months later, Oceanic Airlines Flight 343, a Boeing 747-200, leaves Athens bound for Washington, D.C., with over 400 passengers aboard including Nagi Hassan, lieutenant of the imprisoned terrorist leader El Sayed Jaffa. Hassan and his men hijack the flight, demanding Jaffa's release. Meanwhile, just moments before the hijacking, a suicide bomber working for Jaffa destroys a London Marriott hotel restaurant.