CON AIR
A film review by Cameron Shelley
Copyright 1997 Cameron Shelley
Con Air (Touchstone)
Review by:
Cameron Shelley -- June 25, 1997.
Review URL:
http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~cpshelle/Reviews/conair.html
Cast:
Nicolas Cage (Cameron Poe), John Cusack (Vince
Larkin), John Malkovich (Cyrus Grissom), Steve
Buscemi (Garland Greene), Nick Chinlund (Billy
Bedform), Rachel Ticotin (Sarah Bishop), Colm Meaney
(Duncan Malloy), Ving Rhames (Nathan Jones)
Screenplay:
Scott Rosenberg
Director:
Simon West
Producer:
Kenny Bates, Lynn Bigelow, Peter Bogart, Jerry
Bruckheimer, Jonathan Hensleigh, Jim Kouf, Chad
Oman.
Con Air is a strange marriage indeed. It combines the criminal chic movie recently updated by Quentin Tarrantino a la Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction with the heroic but tragically mistreated military man brought to us only last year in Bruckheimer's The Rock. How can you put together a basically moral, sympathetic hero with a bunch of America's worst criminals and have the audience like them all, all at the same time? The answer, as Con Air shows, is to just do it - embrace the incongruities!
The plot centers around the misfortune of one Cameron Poe, an ex Army Ranger, who is sent to the bighouse for killing a man who attacked his pregnant wife. So unfair!!! After serving his time, Poe is loaded onto a US Marshalls Service flight for transport home. As chance would have it, that flight is also filled with some of the worst criminals currently warehoused in the US prison system - all on their way to a new mega-maximum security facility. Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom leads the cons in revolt and takes over the plane. Poe's homecoming is irrevocably delayed!
The plot setup for this film is certainly its worst element. A good deal of time is essentially wasted at the outset of this picture, during which Poe's character is elaborated. Poe, of course, is going to need lots of equipment for his flight, so he is gifted with special training with the US Army Rangers (twice decorated, if I recall), a very strong but easily bruised sense of loyalty, and a secure place in society (his lovely family). An eight year prison term brings him completely up to spec. Each of these details is laboriously presented and remarked upon, as if they might be difficult for the audience to understand. Such an introduction, if better handled, would be appropriate for a more complex character and I can't help but wonder if there was originally some intention to make the movie a little more suspenseful, to make Poe's choice of what to do on the plane a little more difficult, but there is never really a moment's doubt. Although Poe and his wife make a couple of remarks about his "problem" - an overweaning pride or something - nothing much materializes out of this particular thread.
The criminal mayhem wreaked by Cyrus and his many cronies gets the movie up to action speed and maintains it for much of the remainder of the picture. Each of the criminals set free on the flight comes from a familiar mould. Cyrus seems to be something of a cross between Jack Nicholson's Joker and the Unabomber, and is brought to the screen via the standard John Malkovich performance a la Mitch Leary from In the Line of Fire. Garland Greene is an obvious imitation of Hannibal Lector, although Buscemi wisely steers clear of outright impersonation. You get the idea: a hit parade of murderers, rapists, etc. Fortunately, each of these characters is played knowingly and energetically and it is quite clear that no one is taking them seriously. Even the long-suffering Poe, who could, in theory, easily end up dead on this flight just shrugs as he helps the cops and his friend get out alive, making only the observation,
Somehow, they managed to get every creep and
freak in the universe on this one plane.
Funny how that happens! The various policemen chasing the escaping cons also know their parts. Duncan Malloy is a rabid DEA G-man whose solution to everything is fast cars and a hail of gunfire, whereas Vince Larkin is the sandal-wearing college-boy who quotes Dostoevsky but has a stout heart.
So, everyone knows which side of Con Air's bread is buttered, and most of the movie is spent listening to amusing dialog and observing the planes and bullets flying and stuff blowing up. Perhaps to make up for its slow start, the movie concludes with no less than three action-packed endings! First the plane crashes at Lerner field, then it crashes again in Las Vegas, at which point the action switches to a fire engine which then crashes elsewhere in Las Vegas. The crashes are spaced out by lots of chasing, fighting, gunfire and explosions. (Something about Nicolas Cage and Las Vegas...I don't know.) Finally, there is the inevitable and thankfully brief reunion between Poe and his wife and daughter. Anyway, Bruckheimer has taken the basic elements of the action picture and simply put more of them on screen. The presentation is generally deft, efficient, and effective, making Con Air a serviceable entry in the action picture genre.
The action is interleaved with some occasional attempts at suspense, as when Poe's true, good intentions are nearly exposed in flight, and when Greene is given the opportunity to murder a small child. Suspense aimed at Poe is brief and quickly comes to nothing, whereas Greene's encounter with the little girl threatens to wreck the tongue-in-cheek feel of the whole movie. Fortunately, Greene does not murder the girl and the whole episode is made subject of an awkward joke, but it does serve to demonstrate the frailty of the movie's understanding with the audience. As if to remind everyone of this tacit agreement, the movie ends with Greene enjoying an umbrella drink at a roulette table, followed by portraits of the main cast members smiling for the camera as the credits roll. "Just kidding, remember!"
In a recent interview, Nicolas Cage remarked that he did Con Air because he feels he hasn't perfected the art of the action picture. Well, Con Air certainly has more explosions, gunfire, and chases than, say, The Rock (but "that's just a rock"), and Cage plays a tougher character in this one. I'm not convinced that such changes represent progress, however, even for the action picture genre. Con Air is a competently professional piece of work, but plays out a very thin and limited concept without leaving Cage with any obvious avenue of development. Mind you, if he does end up playing Superman next year, he'll be able to endure even more insults and explosions than he did in this outing.
cpshelle@watarts.uwaterloo.ca - Phone: (519) 888-4567 x2555
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