CON AIR
A film review by V. B. Daniel
Copyright 1997 V. B. Daniel
Okay, here's the deal. 'Member back in kidhood when you saw an ad during Saturday cartoons for some fab-o new toy? This fill-in-the-blank, whatever it was, had the right-on dig-o-rama. It was flashy, shiny, cool. It did backflips, shot sparks, spun like a top, made rattatat noises, had kung fu grip. The fresh-scrubbed kids in the commercial -- all freckly-faced and chipper -- looked like they were having the time of their lives playing with it. The announcer was all frothy and screamin', "Be sure to get the fill-in-the-blank today!"
Well, you'd go absolutely batcrap to get that dang fill-in-the-blank. You'd whine and carry on, pitch a peemortal fit or three. You'd drop oh-so-subtle hints to your parents, like, "Momma, I just GOTTA have a fill-in-the-blank!" You'd drag her through the store like a wrecker pullin' a Taurus, 'til you could plop her in front of the shelf, so she could see exactly what the box looked like and its exact location on the shelf. And, she'd try to put you off with, A) "Save your allowance..." B) "Maybe for your birthday," or , C) "We'll see...." (I always detested, "We'll see....)
Then finally, some interminable eon later, you got it! The fill-in-the-blank! After all the hullabaloo, the fill-in-the-blank was finally in your hands! And you played with it. And, without fail, the fill-in-the-blank turned out to be a big gyp. It broke, it didn't fly, it didn't make the same sounds it made on TV. You didn't have freckles and you weren't all that chipper. And, now, you were stuck with it.
My dear patients, that's exactly how I felt last night when I left the theater after seeing Con Air, Paramount's float in the summer blockbuster parade. I'd seen trailer after trailer for the thing, not realizing I was being duped with the same marketing finesse that made the fill-in-the-blank so appealing years ago. And, by criminy, all I was left with was a box of 180 dB explosions and an empty shell of a movie. No spinnin' tops, no shootin' sparks, no kung fu grip. Batteries not included.
Nicolas Cage stars as Cameron Poe, a prison parolee being transported with a batch of the most heinous criminals on Planet Reebok. The nare-do-wells (surprise!) hijack the plane to escape. And the only way Poe can prove he's not a heinous criminal himself is to stop this merry band of goons. Simple, huh?
We get the standard creepy turn from John Malkovich, this time as criminal mastermind Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom. If you saw In The Line Of Fire, you've caught Cyrus the Virus. His name was different in that film, but it's the same person. Super-cool Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction, Mission:Impossible) is second-in-command Nathan "Diamond Dog" Jones. And, oh, yes, Steve "Where's the Orthodontist" Buscemi plays Garland "The Marietta Mangler" Greene, a Lecter-wannabe (whose character never kills anyone in this movie, by the way....). I love how movie prisoners always have a nickname that ends up in quotations; even when it's spoken, you just want to do that arms-up-two-fingers-of-each- hand-scratchin'-in-mid-air-universal-symbol-for- quotations-sort-of-dealie.
Add to this mishmash one John Cusack, as U.S. Marshall Vince Larkin, and you've got a very promising action thriller, bigger and better than The Fugitive or The Rock. Right?
Wrong. In fact, this drivel should not even be within spittin' distance of the moviehouse. The Nickster, doing some funky Elvis-Rosco P. Coltrain-Dukes-of-Hazzard voice, is buffed up and oily, he sports a nice long hair weave, and has the most consistent T-shirt sweat-stains since Bruce Willis in Die Hard. But, despite his Nickness, which is always so fun to watch, he does not make this movie great. In fact, he's merely the man that keeps this cinematic upchuck from getting my dreaded DEAD ON ARRIVAL rating.
You pull Cage out of the pot, and you've got a relentless storm of car wrecks, plane wrecks, and other gas-induced explosions, peppered with silly murders and absolutely the lamest dialogue this side of Godzilla 1985. This is producer Jerry Bruckheimer's first film without his late partner and friend of the working girl Don Simpson, and it really makes one wonder exactly who the brains of that twosome really was. Bruck-man can go over the top with the best of them (and here, WAY over the top), but it's simply mindless violence for the sake of the legendary "Summer Slam Action Flick." Unlike his last year winner, The Rock, there's no attempt to balance the gunpowder with a little wit, thought, and common sense story structure.
And, while we're raking over Bruck-man, let's point out something else here. Con Air marks his pattern of pulling directors from the ranks of TV commercials. (The Rock's Michael Bay, Top Gun's Tony Scott, Flashdance's Adrian Lyne all got their start puking out small-screen harpies for Madison Avenue.) I have no doubt that this man Simon West could direct a feature movie, but, somehow, I get the feeling that West was only doing what he was told to do instead of putting his own stamp on the movie. I find it hard to believe that a first-time director chose to not tell any sort of story. No, gentle readers, this thing smells of Bruck-man telling West, "I said EXPLOSION, not EXPOSITION."
Sorry, West and Bruck. You let your testosterone get the better of you this time. You'll probably make a small mint from the Bang Junkies who get off seeing Las Vegas blow up, but, as for making a good movie, you missed the trick completely. C'mon guys, don't forget: some assembly required.
Get "reel" soon, Doc
Dr. Daniel's Movie Emergency http://www.stairwell.com/doc/
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