Con Air | | Cast : | Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, John Malkovich | | Director : | Simon West | | Studio : | Buena Vista | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | June 06, 1997 | | DVD Released Date : | September 07, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 30, 2005 | | Summary | CON @!#$#$@% AIR | Content
 | As big dumb action films go, it hardly gets bigger and dumber than this. Yet "Con Air" is bursting at the seams with acting talent and a laugh-out-loud script so chock full of classic action film one-liners it makes this movie one of the most rapturous popcorn-munching guilty pleasures since "Point Break". This is a movie that so gleefully revels in its shallowness and perfectly tuned to its adrenaline-craving audience, it can barely afford five minutes to spend on all of the necessary plot setup, dispensing of it easily before the title graphics even appear. In that five minutes, we learn that Army Ranger Cameron Poe (a musclebound Nicholas Cage) has returned from a tour of duty to visit his lovely wife. No sooner does he step off the plane and finish a line dance, then he gets into some trouble with some wound-up locals. They fight, one pulls a knife, and Poe ends up killing him in self defense. Whoops. Well, the yokels make off with the knife and Poe gets railroaded into Arkansas federal prison, where he spends his days weaving in and out of Michael Bey-style quick edits, working furiously on his pecs and voice-over narrating sensitive letters to his yet unseen daughter in a ridiculously mannered southern drawl that sounds like Foghorn Leghorn on a morphine trip. After 8 years of prison workouts and bad hair days, Poe is finally on his way home to meet his daughter - that is, until his prison transfer plane is hijacked by the forces of evil. And mayhem and madness ensues as all laws of sensible plot development are thrown out the window and action movie physics take over.
The ensemble all-star villains cast includes John Malkovich, Ving Rhames, and Steve Buscemi as a Jeffrey Dahmer type, plus sturdy supporting roles for Dave Chappelle and Danny Trejo. John Cusack and Colm Meaney have a grand time on the ground playing good cop/bad cop as they try to track the runaway jet, while Rachel Ticotin and Mykelti Williamson provide visual confirmation of Poe's conscience as well as distracting semi-perils that our hero must solve. Director Simon West keeps the action flowing, synched perfectly to Trevor Rabin's noisy industrial-strength action film soundtrack, as Con Air careens from one implausibly over-the-top set piece to another. This is the kind of movie that could *only* end up crashing a C-130 into the Las Vegas strip. Are we surprised when the perfectly operational police bike crashes into the back of the firetruck and explodes instantly? Or seeing an angry Poe taking a gunshot to the arm and not even flinch? Or how about Malkovich somehow being able to surreptitiously construct an incindiary device in a maximum-security lockdown? (Of course, i'd say the effete Malkovich has a better chance of the latter, as opposed to giving an freakishly amped-up Cage a good match in a fist fight on a runaway firetruck.)
It always amuses me when sensible people - would-be critic and audient alike - log on to try to throw the believability gauntlet at a hilariously grand spectacle like this. Is it seriously worth wasting your time expressing indignance about your cinematic sensibilities being ruffled by a Simpson/Bruckheimer production? Were you expecting Simon West to squeeze out a mini-"Citizen Kane" before he got to work on "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider"? ADMIT that you have been entertained. And put the bunny down. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 17, 2005 | | Summary | Best action film of the late 90s | Content
| Jerry Bruckheimer's production style rarely makes a good movie but Con Air is one of those rare exceptions in which all the OTT mayhem and full-on action make a film so exciting it scorches when you watch it.
Nic Cage (in a typically bad performance) is Cameron Poe, a US Ranger who is sent to prison for accidentally killing a thug who attacks his pregnant wife. After 8 years of porridge he is freed and hitches a ride home on a prison plane called The Jailbird. But this is no ordinary flight.
On Board are a small army of America's toughest crooks including Cyrus 'The Virus' Grissom (John Malkovich) a men on death row for murder, robbery, kidnapping and extortion. Nathan 'Diamond Dog' Jones (Ving Rhames), a black militant inside for murder. Billy Bedlam (Nick Chinlund), inside for killing his cheating wife's family and dog. Pinball Parker (Dave Chapelle), a pimp and drug-dealer. Swamp Thing (MC Gainey) a pilot who knows a few things about a good hijack. And finally Garland Green AKA The Marietta Mangler (Steve Buscemi) a serial killer in for killing a zillion people and crossing 2 state borders wearing a girls head as a hat.
As you can tell, with such a eclectic bunch of psychos on board it's only a matter of seconds before all hell breaks loose. As soon as the plane is in the air the cons have taken over, restrained or killed the guards and have changed the destination from prison to South America.
Poe, being the good-hearted sort of chap that he is, doesn't rat out as his best pal needs his insulin shot and no one else will help. It's up to Poe to sneakily round up the baddies until US Marshall Larkin (John Cusack) and the cavalry can get there. Easier said than done, as double-crosses, suspicious cons and incompetent authority foul everything up. The result is action overload as the film blazes through to it's anarchic, devastating climax upon another anarchic, devastating climax. At the end you'll be left breathless and your senses stinging with over-stimulation. Con Air is everything an action film should be.
Steve Buscemi steals the whole show. His deadpan, bug-eyed and dare I say 'innocent' portrayal of a deranged killer is the centrepiece of the whole film. The scene where he sings with a little girl (and continues later on) will either freak you out or steal your heart. And the ending is the best you could hope for.
Mark Mancina and Trevor Rabin provide a loud, blaring score of thrash-metal and acoustic guitars with the usual Media Ventures flare. It's brilliant stuff and I suggest you hunt down the (sadly incomplete) score CD. And this really did deserve the Best Original Song award over that pansy Titanic one.
Superior to both The Rock and Face/Off, Con Air is Nic Cage at his (worst) best as an action hero and Bruckheimer at his best as an action producer. See it, for the love of God, see it.
However, the Region 1 DVD is quite crap with no extras and a rubbish 2.35:1 non-anamorhic picture. The Region 2 DVD is anamorphic, with nice motion menus, trailers and some brief featurettes. Get that version if you can. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 16, 2005 | | Summary | GREAT CAST, GREAT ACTION, GREAT STORY! | Content
| Con Air is one of those films that will slowly work it's way into more and more DVD collections as time goes on. It has all the stars, from Cage and Cusask to the excellently cast bad sicko bad-boy prisoners like Jonny Trejo and John Malkovich. Great Storyline, Tons of action, some redeption thrown in...this movie has it all!
Former war hero Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) is sentenced to eight years in prison when he accidentally kills a man in a barroom brawl while defending his pregnant wife. When his release comes through, he's eager to see the daughter he's never met. However, Poe's original flight is delayed, so he's put aboard a flight transporting ten of the most dangerous men in the American penal system to a new high-security facility.
One of the criminals, Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom (John Malkovich), is a serial killer and insane genius who has hatched a diabolical plot: with the help of several other hoods, including Diamond Dog (Ving Rhames), Johnny 23 (Daniel Trejo), and Garland Greene (Steve Buscemi), Cyrus and his men will hijack the plane and fly to a neutral nation where they can live as free men. Poe finds himself stuck in the middle; he has to find a way to get home, keep himself alive, look after his cellmate Baby-O (Mykelti Williamson), who will die without proper medicine, and try to help the cops on the ground, including agent Vince Larkin (John Cusack). |
| Rating | | | Date | May 05, 2005 | | Summary | Not a BAD summer 'blockbuster', but..... | Content
| Don't misunderstand me, in LIKE high energy action movies that don't make a lot of sense if you insist on taking them apart. Unfortunately this one stumbles right out of the gate. The whole premise of the movie depends on the audience believing in Mr. Cage's predicament, and I can't.
Supposedly, he has been in prison for years because he, a decorated combat vet, was assaulted by a gang of toughs outside a bar where he had gone to pick up his wife and take her home, and he killed one of them. I don't buy it; not for a minute. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the creep he killed was the local sheriff's son, and that the local political machine is strong enough to get a conviction. I still have to believe that sometime in the first year the Governor of the state is going to call his good buddy, the Sheriff, and say "Merle, I know you loved that no good son of yours, but there's an election coming up. If I don't pardon this guy he's going to be the campaign issue that sinks me. I'm writing a pardon."
That, or he wins on first appeal. The idea that a combat vet is going to rot in prison for years for defending himself from assault is absurd. It undermines the entire film. It is too much to ask the audience to buy.
Otherwise the movie is no sillier than most of its type. There are some genuinely fine moments, and it is full of great energy. It's too bad the film makers threw away any chance of maintaining my minimal standards of belief for such films in the first minutes. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 10, 2005 | | Summary | Retarded | Content
| If you are a child, you might enjoy this film. But for us movie fans, who have intelligence, you can't fool us with this absurd tale about a bunch of convicts joining together, working together like friends, "if you're bad like me, you're cool." Pleeeeze. In the real world, they'd all kill each other once the cops were out of the picture. It's a stereotype to say that all bad people stick together. This movie was absurd, corny, ridiculous, unrealistic, and it's a shame a great actor like john malkovich agreed to it. |
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