Movie Review: Con Air
Starring: Nicholas Cage, Steve Buscemi, John Malkovich, Vin Rhames, John Cusack & Dave Chapelle
Directed by: Simon West
Produced by: Jerry Bruckheimer

This film is also not new. Its original theatrical release was nearly ten years ago (1997.) I write this column not as a review of the film but rather as a retrospective of an era of filmmaking that featured such dramatic and elaborate action sequences that it left no room for believable storyline or dialogue. Yet these films will have their own special place in movie history, so devoted they are to the opera of destruction that it is impossible to ignore or forget them.

This whole idea most certainly started with the birth of the 1980’s action film, headlined by such superstars as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. As time progressed, the public appetite for testosterone-drenched cinema showed no sign of ending. The age gives birth to other action heroes such as Jean-Claude van Damme as well as Wesley Snipes and Bruce Willis, each movie studio and production company clambering for their piece of the pie.

The film Con Air represents the peak of excess and glory of this film genre. Soon there after the genre endured life-altering changes from which it never recovered, and action films took on a very different appearance, combining far more realistic circumstances, darker colors, themes and even believable, realistic storylines.

Con Air is a worthy case study for many reasons. Jerry Bruckheimer, more recently responsible for such spectacle-adventure films such as Pirates of the Caribbean, has always had a calling card of destruction and spectacle. With Con Air, the spectacle has never been more visceral, the destruction never more gratuitous, and possibly never more fun.

The Premise: Nicholas Cage plays a convict on the day of his parole, sent home aboard a flight full of hard-core criminals to his family. A mid-air jailbreak ensues, and it is up to our hero to play the devils advocate until the right moment when he can save the day and make it home to his family.

The film begins with such a rapid set-up, that if you aren’t paying attention for the first ten minutes, you’ll be wondering how all of these people got airborne. The whole point of the opening of the film, of course, is to simply get the characters into the midst of the fray so we can watch the insanity begin.

Once airborne, Cage is in his finest mode, spouting deadpan machismo-laden mono-syllabic lines faster than thought humanly possible.

Other characters, such as John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi are allowed to play with their psychotic finest, using all of the disturbing traits of their acting as a springboard to unleash the most frightening assortment of super freaks that moviemakers can imagine. Buscemi plays a Hannibal Lecter-like character who is transported in full protective gear, while Malkovich plays the violent mastermind, who soon is in command of the aircraft.

One fantastic scene to the next follows, pushing us further and further away from the realm of believability, and more and more into the world of explosions, mayhem and expensive pyrotechnics. The bar is pushed so far that the work on this film was even nominated for an Academy Award for sound editing.

This film is fun to watch, but even while its happening I feel guilty, knowing the writing, the acting and the directing is all so blatantly directed at my basest instincts and impulses. It will never be regarded as a great film, but in the world of the super-action film, Con Air must stand next to the best for its sheer ferocity and extravagance, a self-indulgent monument an era of American film that will likely not be repeated any time soon.

The By-The-Way Grade for Con Air: C

T.