Air America is a great action comedy that's simple, fun and witty. Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. both give great performances with good chemistry. Nancy Travis and David Marshall Grant are both really good. It's well paced, well filmed and Roger Spottiswoode's direction is also really good. The soundtrack is great and the music by Charles Gross is good.

A young pilot (Robert Downey) finds himself recruited unwittingly into a covert and corrupt CIA airlift organization operating in Vietnam War Era Laos.

As of 2017, the whole story of the CIA's involvement in drug smuggling has not come out. The general outline has been known for years, as this film indicates (it was based on a non-fiction book). But we are still waiting for the full expose.

This film is good, not great. It suffers from an uneven feel. You want it to be a comedy, a buddy movie, or something like that. It isn't. Or perhaps it would work great as a serious exploration of government corruption. But it isn't that, either. It just sort of float in between somewhere.

American military is operating a private airline in Laos during the Vietnam War. Billy Covington (Robert Downey Jr.) is a traffic copter pilot for a Los Angeles radio station. His pilot license gets suspended after he flew low to confront a driver and he gets recruited to join Air America. Veteran pilots Gene Ryack (Mel Gibson) and others show him the ropes. Major Donald Lemond and Rob Diehl from military intelligence run the operation which secretly transports drugs for corrupt General Soong. Idoit Senator Davenport arrives on a tour of the mission.

This tries to be MASH but it doesn't have the humor. It tries to look into the ridiculousness of this world. I don't find many laughs. Ryack is a smuggler but it's not some fun wacky schemes. It makes him less lovable. Covington is the irreverent earnest young man. The duo sorta works sometimes. The movie doesn't quite work as a satire and it doesn't work as realism.