Gary Oldman (Air Force One) Air Force One
Gary Oldman played Egor Korshunov, the ultranationalist terrorist who hijacks Air Force One to demand the release of General Radek. The role arrived in the middle of a decade where Oldman had become Hollywood's default villain — Dracula (1992), Drexl Spivey in True Romance (1993), Norman Stansfield in Leon: The Professional (1994), Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in The Fifth Element (1997). Korshunov is the most politically articulate of the lot: a man with genuine grievances about the Soviet collapse, American interference, and what he sees as the moral emptiness of Western capitalism.
Oldman was Hollywood's "rent-a-villain" and knew it
By 1997, the pattern was entrenched. Studios called Oldman when they needed a villain with intensity, range, and the physical training to project menace through body language.
"I got sort of typecast for a while. I became kind of like the poster boy for the 'rent-a-villain.'" — Gary Oldman, IndieWire (2024)
"Oh, we need a villain and we'll get Gary. I don't know how that happened, but it happened." — Gary Oldman, IndieWire (2024)
Korshunov was the apex of this run — the last major villain role before Oldman began consciously shifting away from the type. He later described the trajectory with candor.
"It was fun for a while, but eventually, I just put a stop to it. It got a little old." — Gary Oldman, IndieWire (2024)
Korshunov's ideology has more substance than the genre requires
What distinguishes Korshunov from Oldman's other 1990s villains is the writing. Andrew W. Marlowe gave him a coherent political position — a former Afghan War veteran and Moscow Radio commentator who sees American triumphalism as the cause of Russian suffering. His monologues are not decoration; they articulate the post-Soviet resentment that would fuel real-world Russian nationalism within a few years.
"I always like my bad guys to think that they're the good guys in their movie." — Andrew W. Marlowe, Syfy Wire (2021)
Variety's Todd McCarthy praised the result.
"Oldman registers strongly as a veteran of the Afghan campaign pushed to desperate lengths to newly ennoble his country." — Todd McCarthy, Variety (1997)
The Unspooled podcast analysis observed that Korshunov's speeches contain "infinitely more substance and resonance" than comparable action-film villains, describing him as "a pro-Radek nationalist, whose hatred of the U.S. is personal, political, and weirdly well-argued." (unspooled)
Off camera, Oldman was the opposite of Korshunov
The contrast between Oldman's on-set behavior and his performance was sharp enough that Wolfgang Petersen nicknamed the entire production "Air Force Fun." Oldman was genial, comedic, and loose between takes, then snapped into cold menace the instant the camera rolled. The crew called him "Scary Gary" for the speed of the transformation. (flipthemoviescript)
Ford pushed the physical performances further by instructing Oldman to actually hit him during their fight scenes, wanting the confrontation to read as genuine contact rather than choreography. The result is a cargo-bay fight that feels like two men trying to kill each other rather than two actors performing a sequence.
The villain role that led to leaving villainy
After Air Force One, Oldman's major villain roles diminished. His casting as Commissioner Gordon in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy (2005-2012) marked the shift — playing the moral center rather than the threat. That trajectory led to his Oscar-winning performance as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017), the furthest possible distance from the "rent-a-villain" decade. Korshunov stands as the culmination of that earlier phase: the most politically substantive villain Oldman played, in the biggest commercial hit of the series. (indiewire)