Con Air

The film starts with Army Ranger Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) getting locked up for manslaughter. We get a short montage involving Poe working out and corresponding with his young daughter. Yes, it’s that sort of film. Suddenly, it’s seven years later and Poe is being released. He’s catching a flight home with the World’s most psychotic criminals. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Inevitably, the criminals seize control and it’s up to our ridiculously wigged hero to save the day. I get the feeling that this film would be one big sandwich of average if it weren’t for John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi. Actually-that’s a bit unfair as the constantly underrated John Cusack is fantastic as the verbose Vince Larkin.

They say that a film is nothing without a decent villain. You know what? They- whoever “they” may be are right. I mean, would “Star Wars” have been as awesome as it is without Darth Vader? Would “The Dark Knight” have been as awesome without the Joker? Definitely not. “Con Air” has two great villains in the forms of Cyrus The Virus and Garland Greene (played by Malkovich and Buscemi respectively). Whilst I’m not saying that they’re on the same as the Sith Lord or the Clown Prince of Crime, they are memorable enough to actually add some “oomph” to proceedings.

Let’s just get this out of the way. “Con Air” is dumber than a bag of hammers. The refreshing thing is that it’s fully aware of this. You only have to look at the slow motion shot of Nic Cage running away from a feckin’ huge explosion to know this. It’s nice to see a film do this without slipping into parody. There are silly bits too- the slow motion (noticing a trend here?) shot of Poe getting off the bus and flinging back his long hair whilst smiling looks like its been stolen from the L’Oreal ad agency. Plus, Cyrus’ death (I suppose this is a spoiler, but if you can’t figure out that the bad guy dies in this sort of film you need serious help) is ridiculously over-the-top, even for a Hollywood boomfest.