Con Air (97)

6/27/97

It was fun. There's nothing like a Bruckheimer-produced movie. You get mostly guys, swearing like sailors, with a guitar heavy soundtrack booming in the background. Stuff blows up, guys bond heterosexually, and everyone is sweaty and covered with oil at the end. The plot of this movie has Cage parolled from prison and sent home on a plane which is inhabited by the worst of the worst career criminals. The bad guys take over the plane and Cage tries to save it. All movies like this have the inevitable sequence where the cop [Cusack] introduces the bad guys to the other characters and the audience. "Joe Smith killed and ate and entire Central American village, he's a specialist in hand-to-hand combat, blah, blah, blah."
The cast is loaded with studs. You got your Cusack, Cage, Malkovich, and Buscemi. And they all seem to be having fun. The plot has all the holes in it you'd expect. The final chase with Cusack and Cage on police motorcycles and the bad guys on a firetruck is preposterous. You get neat poems in a film like this. One guard to another 'looks like they had to gag 'em and bag 'em, a bunch of shitters and spitters'. You just don't get this kind of quality dialogue at the latest Jane Austen adaptation. It was fun and the masses absolutely cheered at my theater. Plus, it's better than the new Batman.
Nicolas Cage [Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Valley Girl, Rumble Fish, Racing With The Moon, Birdy, Peggy Sue Got Married, Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, Vampire's Kiss, Wild At Heart, Red Rock West, Honeymoon In Vegas, It Could Happen To You, Guarding Tess, Leaving Las Vegas, Kiss Of Death, The Rock] John Cusack [my generation's best actor, Class, Sixteen Candles, The Sure Thing, Better Off Dead, Stand By Me, One Crazy Summer, Broadcast News, Eight Men Out, Say Anything..., Fat Man And Little Boy, The Grifters, True Colors, The Player, Map Of The Human Heart, Bob Roberts, Money For Nothing, Bullets Over Broadway, Baseball (PBS), Frasier (TV), City Hall, Grosse Pointe Blank] John Malkovich [The Killing Fields, Empire Of The Sun, Dangerous Liaisons, The Accidental Tourist, The Sheltering Sky, The Object Of Beauty, Of Mice And Men, Jennifer Eight, In The Line Of Fire, Alive] Steve Buscemi [1st man of independent film, L.A. Law (TV), Sleepwalk, New York Stories, Mystery Train, Lonesome Dove (TV), Miller's Crossing, King Of New York, Billy Bathgate, Barton Fink, Reservoir Dogs, Twenty Bucks, Rising Sun, Pulp Fiction, The Hudsucker Proxy, Airheads, Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, Desperado, Dead Man, Fargo] Nick Chinlund [Lethal Weapon 3, NYPD Blue (TV), The X-Files (TV), Eraser] Rachel Ticotin [Fort Apache, The Bronx, Total Recall, Falling Down, Natural Born Killers, Don Juan DeMarco] Colm Meaney [Die Hard 2, Dick Tracy, Come See The Paradise, The Commitments, Under Siege, The Last Of The Mohicans, Far And Away, The Snapper] M.C. Gainey [Pennies From Heaven, Frances, Starman, Soul Man, Fatal Beauty, The Mighty Ducks, Breakdown] Ving Rhames [Casualties Of War, The Long Walk Home, Jacob's Ladder, Homicide, Dave, Pulp Fiction, E.R. (TV), Kiss Of Death, Striptease, Mission: Impossible] Brendan Kelly [Melvin And Howard, Malcolm X, Devil In A Blue Dress, The Rock] Written by Scott Rosenberg [Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, Beautiful Girls] Directed by Simon West
40 critics 5.1
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