CON AIR
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1997 Chuck Dowling
Con-Air (1997) *1/2 out of ***** - Cast: Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich, John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Colm Meaney. Don Davis. Written by: Scott Rosenberg. Directed by: Simon West. Running Time: 115 minutes.
Sometimes I just don't know what's worse: a movie that's bad from start to finish, or a bad movie which every once in a while shows a moment of creativity, but then returns to being bad. "Con-Air" falls into the latter catagory.
The plot, if you can call it one, is childishly simple. Convicts take over a prison plane and attempt to escape to a foreign country. Good guys try to stop them. That's it. The film's main hero is Nicolas Cage, a former US Ranger who was sent to jail for accidentally killing a punk who was attacking him and his wife. (I guess that jail sentence was to send a message out to all people that accidentally killing a drunken hoodlum while defending your family WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!) This of course is merely just a gimmick to have a "good" guy on the plane when it gets hijacked. It just so happens that Cage is being paroled, and is just trying to return home to his wife and daughter.
The criminals who hijack the plane are John Malkovich, who plays Cyrus the Virus. His nickname is unjustified, as he never does anything to seemingly serve such a nickname. His assistant is Ving Rhames, who plays Diamond Dog. His nickname is unjustified, as he never does anything to seemingly serve such a nickname. Along the way they are joined by another criminal, Steve Buscemi, who plays the Marietta Mangler. His nickname is unjustified, as he never does anything to seemingly serve such a nickname. I think you can see a trend here.
The problem with "Con Air" is that it must have been written by a four year old. The "Oh Come On!" factor is high with this one, as more of the movie progresses you'll want to actually jeer the stupidity running rampant on the screen. There's not one new idea or concept here, and every cliche is beaten to hell, and then some more. For example, any movie where criminals hijack an airplane or an airport, do you think the main bad guy will sarcastically use flight attendant phrases, such as: "Enjoy your flight" or "Welcome aboard Con-Air"? What makes the whole thing infinitely more frustrating is that while this four year old was writing the script, apparently his folks would wander into the room and scribble a decent line of dialogue or a brief moment into the script. Then they'd wander off again to let the little one finish his little story.
The characters are one of the most disappointing things about the film. For no reason whatsoever, the writer gave Nicolas Cage's character an accent, and Cage decides to do a very slight variation of his "Raising Arizona" character's accent. This distracted me for the whole film, as all I could do was remember how good "Raising Arizona" is, and how retardedly stupid it is for this character to have a pointless, sometimes unintelligible accent. The last part of the film winds up in Las Vegas, and imagine that! Nicolas Cage is in Las Vegas! Can he do a movie not in Vegas?
John Cusack, who for some reason made this film yet completely trashes this type of film in interviews, is completely wrong in the part of a US Marshall (!). But, his character is worthless, and really has no bearing on anything. He's given a nemesis, a DEA agent (Colm Meaney), who's only purpose is to argue with Cusack. These two men argue about how things should be handled, who's tougher, blah blah blah, which only made me wonder why the government assigned two different agencies to this prison transfer but didn't bother to give anyone control of the situation.
Malkovich is just doing a slightly more maniacial version of his bad guy from "In The Line of Fire", which again distracted me because all I could do is remember how good "In The Line of Fire" was. His character also isn't extremely bright. He hides all the plans for the hijacking in his old jail cell, which are immediately discovered (and amazing decoded by Cusack in a matter of seconds). The problem is that these are papers, which could have easily been ripped up and flushed. But instead he just casually hides all this important evidence, which instantly lets the cops know what to do. A brilliant criminal indeed. Also, I can't watch Malkovich much because he's always giving interviews about how he doesn't really like films and would rather be in the theater.
Buscemi's character holds the most promise, as he gets a truly great entrance scene. Unfortunately as it turns out, his character - a mass murderer - turns out to be nothing but comic relief. A funny serial killer. His character's final scene, the last shot of the film, is supposed to be a big joke. But when you see it, really think about it. Is it really funny? If it happened near you, would you find it hilarious or be scared to death? What a total waste of potential there.
Amazingly the most sympathetic and crucial character of the film is a stuffed bunny rabbit. No, I'm not joking. Cage is bringing it home for his little girl, and you'll notice that throughout the film that this bunny rabbit is the basis for the film's turning points, as well as a basis for unintentional hilarity. Get this... at one point to threaten Nicholas Cage, Malkovich actually picks up the toy, holds a gun to it, and in all seriousness says "Stay back or the bunny gets it". Please feel free to throw the remainder of your soda at the screen when this happens. I guess the four year old thought it was hilarious.
After a slow opening 20 minutes to set the story, "Con-Air" is non-stop action. But it's so unoriginal and uninspired that you'll want it to stop. Also, I don't know what the director has done in the past, but he should not have been allowed to shoot or edit action sequences. The spastic and rapid fire editing makes "Natural Born Killers" look like one big tracking shot, as every time action takes place it's like looking at a cartoonist's flipbook of completely random images. It's much too noisy, as bullets fly, things explode, AND heavy score music blasts the audience all at once. If there was any dialogue in there, I hope I missed it. I guess one other big problem is that there's a false sense of urgency about capturing these guys. They don't have some sort of master plan to cause great harm to people, they're just trying to get to the Carribbean or wherever there's a non-extradition treaty. Nothing in the script was well thought out.
"Con-Air" is a total disappointment. Hopefully others can recognize its insulting stupidity and it will fade quickly from the summer movie scene. [R]
-- Chuck Dowling Visit Chuck's Movie Reviews at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ Over 1,600 movies rated and/or reviewed! Movie news, film related links, and reader's reviews.
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