DIRECTOR
Simon
West
SCREENWRITER
Scott
Rosenberg
PRODUCER
Jerry Bruckheimer
CINEMATOGRAPHER
David Tattersall
MUSIC
Mark Mancina
Trevor Rabin
EDITORS
Chris Lebenzon
Steve Mirkovich
Glen Scantlebury
CAST
Nicolas Cage (Cameron Poe)
Monica Potter (Tricia Poe)
John Cusack (Vince Larkin)
Landry Allbright (Casey Poe)
M.C. Gainey (Swamp Thing)
Danny Trejo (Johnny-23)
Steve Buscemi (Garland Greene)
Rachel Ticotin (Bishop)
David Chappelle (Pinball)
Ving Rhames (Diamond Dog)
John Malkovich (Cyrus Grissom)
Mykelti Williamson (Baby-O)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 115m
U.S. release: June 6, 1997
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Other Simon
West garbage
reviewed on this website:
- The
General's Daughter
- Lara
Croft: Tomb Raider
|
Con
Air, the latest hyperbolic
video game passing itself off as a movie, plays as though it
started out as a smarter, more parodic script -- an action flick
subverting action flicks. Well, we'll have none of that
postmodern stuff, not in a Jerry Bruckheimer production. Con
Air is sometimes exciting in a brutish, stupid way, and it
isn't as flamboyantly inept as last summer's The
Rock -- produced by Bruckheimer and his late partner
Don Simpson (Bruckheimer flies solo here). Still, on some level,
the movie doesn't seem to be in on its own jokes.
You'd think that the Die Hard rip-off school of action
films had played itself out, but this genre apparently does
die hard. Here, the Bruce Willis figure is Nicolas Cage as Cameron
Poe, a paroled convict who finds himself on the same flight as
a dozen rabid prisoners who are plotting an escape. Poe, a former
Army ranger, inadvertently killed a scuzball in a fight and got
eight years in jail. Now he just wants to get home to his wife
and meet his little daughter, born during his prison stay. He
even has a birthday gift for the girl: a stuffed bunny.
The bunny is a good indication that the script, by Scott Rosenberg,
was intended as a deadpan goof on stupid action flicks. Rosenberg
wrote two of the wittier films of recent years, Things To
Do In Denver When You're Dead and Beautiful Girls,
and Con Air may have been his backhanded salute to frat-boy
cinema. But Jerry Bruckheimer and rookie director Simon West
(he did Budweiser's talking frogs) aren't on the same page as
Rosenberg. They treat Con Air as a serious stupid
action flick.
The quirky cast is meant to attract moviegoers who wouldn't usually
bother with this stuff, but the brightest lights here -- John
Malkovich as the lead psycho, John Cusack as a determined marshal,
Steve Buscemi as a quiet, contemplative serial killer -- are
merely competent, doing things you've already seen them do expertly
elsewhere. In an interview for US magazine, Malkovich
came right out and admitted he did Con Air for the money
and marquee value that might help bankroll the projects he wants
to make, and that seems to be why everyone else is slumming here.
Everyone, that is, but Nicolas Cage. It may actually be easier
to be great in Leaving
Las Vegas than to be good in this empty spectacle; Cage
throws himself into his character the way he always does, and
his lack of irony is refreshing. He believes in Poe's
gallantry and chivalry, and he makes you believe in Poe's simple-hearted
need to see his little girl and give her that bunny. With anyone
else in the role, the movie would be even more ridiculous than
it already is.
After a while, the plane makes a forced landing in Las Vegas,
the capitol of excess -- a satirical point that loses its punch
in a movie whose excesses make Vegas look like a monastery. We
get the whole macho dictionary: explosions, gory deaths, car
crashes, and a swishy convict who exists only for a few cheap
homophobic laughs. Not much of Con Air is actually fun
-- just frantic and oddly insecure, as if the ghost of Don Simpson
had haunted the set, demanding more noise and less brains. Or
maybe that ghost is the mass audience. Hard to tell, these days. |
