CON AIR
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
Welcome to the silly season. It's summer, and every weekend brings a new hundred million dollar action movie. (Some price tags being slightly less.) Serious movies avoid the heat of summer when people's brains are fried. This diminution of mental capacity causes movie goers to flock to blockbusters promising even louder explosions than the film the week before.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, whose middle name must be "excess," last year gave us THE ROCK. Remember the car chase in it that felt like it was on a Moebius strip and would never end? Well, that was subtle filmmaking compared to the fireworks style extravaganza that ends his latest picture CON AIR. Of course, that part is set in the town that loves people who overindulge -- Las Vegas. The worst part of the conclusion is that when you breathe a slight of relief that this repetitive and overly long film is finally over, it isn't.
But I am getting ahead of myself. As one who has sat through CON AIR, it is easy to dwell on the ending credits since that means you can leave. Still, along the way, Scott Rosenberg's script does have many good one-liners to amuse us, and CON AIR works best as a comedy. You've seen all of the stunts and special effects before so there is little left to focus on other than the acting, which stays at the comic book level, and the dialog.
I kept thinking that if their budget were cut in half, they would have made a better picture. If the special effects department were put on a much stricter budget, the show might have had to develop the characters beyond caricature.
A frequent complaint about movies is that the villain is not strong enough, but here the movie is populated by a plethora of bad guys. "The worst of the worst" prisoners are being transported on the a U. S. Marshal's airplane, which the inmates nickname Con Air (Convict Airlines), to a new maximum security prison. The U. S. Marshal in charge is Vince Larkin (John Cusack from GROSS POINTE BLANK), who quotes Dostoevski and talks like a walking thesaurus.
The hero of the picture is Cameron Poe played by Nicolas Cage, the great character actor from LEAVING LAS VEGAS who seems to be slumming by taking this part. Eight years ago, ex-Army Ranger Cameron killed a man trying to harm his pregnant wife Tricia, played with fashion model beauty by Monica Potter. Cameron is about to be paroled and is hitching his way back on Con Air for his release.
This flight is transporting every manner of criminal including a Hannibal Lecter clone named Garland "The Marietta Mangler" Greene, played by Steve Buscemi in a horrible bit of miscasting. One con tells us that "the way he killed the people, he made the Manson Family look like the Partridge Family." Get the point. These guys are bad, bad, bad. Or as Cameron puts it, "Somehow they managed to get every creep and freak in the universe on this one plane."
The leader of the convicts, Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom, is played by John Malkovich in his perennial slime ball, intellectual role. "Cyrus is a poster child for the criminally insane," according to Larkin.
As the plane is being loaded, Larkin assures his coworker that there is no reason to worry about the operation. "This is a well oiled machine," he tells her. "All we have to worry about is stale peanuts and a little bit of turbulence." For the three people in the world who haven't seen the trailers and know nothing of the movie, this line is a tip off that all hell is about to break loose.
If you want to have fun in the picture, bring a pad and keep a count of the story's illogical aspects. My favorite involves the number of guns the guards take on board the plane to protect themselves. Want to venture a guess? It's one little pistol that the pilot keeps in a locked box in the cockpit. When the inevitable break occurs in mid-air, the lack of guns becomes a severe handicap for the guards. But boy-oh-boy do lots of people die anyway.
In order to appeal to women, the movie was supposedly softened up by Cage's adding little family touches like his stuffed bunny. (At a key point, Cyrus actually threatens Cameron with "Make a move and the bunny gets it!") Disney is marketing the film's almost non-existent love story angle in an attempt to broaden the demographics of the audience. Even religion enters the picture when Cameron tells his dying buddy, "I'm going to show you that God does exist."
Like a roulette player that plays it safe by betting on all the numbers, this movie does not miss anything. Did I mention that there is a transvestite named "Sally Can't Dance" (Renoly), a black militant named Nathan "Diamond Dog" Jones (Ving Rhames), and a tattooed rapist named John "Johnny 23" Baca (Danny Trejo)? Johnny has 23 counts of rape but brags the real number is 600.
Although I had fun listening to the dialog, the show is pure balderdash and about as imaginative as Saturday morning cartoons. A rock 'em, sock 'em, meaningless time at the movies.
CON AIR runs 1:55. It is rated R for strong violence and language. The violence was cartoonish enough so that the film is probably acceptable for most teenagers. I cannot recommend the show although I did laugh often enough to give it **.
**** = A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = Totally and painfully unbearable picture.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: June 6, 1997
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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