CON AIR is a big, noisy, pre-fab summer movie. Yes, it delivers large-scale stunts and lots of hyperactive energy; but after six or so climaxes, it is just plain exhausting.

Rating: 8/10 (18 July 2001)

Nicholas Cage is the good-guy hero, Cameron Poe, a Southern soldier jailed for killing another man in a fight. He has paid his debt to society after years of separation from his loving wife and daughter. Poe is on his way home on a flight carrying some of the scum of the earth. The script tells us over and over just how bad these hardened criminals are. How bad are they? "Every creep and freak in the universe, the worst of the worst." Led by Cyrus "the Virus" (John Malkovich), they take over of the airplane (yea right). Also flying business class with Cyrus are demented sex offenders, crackheads, career rapists, murderers, serial killers, a drag queen and a violent black militant. Oh, yes--there is also an attractive female guard handcuffed in the galley for the rapist to drool over throughout the flight. Unlike that other cons-take-over-an-airplane movie, TURBULENCE, these guys don't crash at LAX, but make a spectacular landing on the strip in Las Vegas. The most satisfying moment has the cargo plane taking out the Vegas Hard Rock Cafe. Maybe they should have circled around and aimed for those Golden Arches. I Loved the flying convertible sequence. Excessive violence, excessive pyrotechnics, excessive music and a script in which every word must have been underlined pound viewers into physical submission. The corny emotional sequences, however, ring completely hollow.
Director Simon West, who has graduated from TV commercials, has a quick-cut, music-video sensibility that will grow annoying to those with an attention span longer than five seconds. Oscar-honored Cage adopts a stiff, Alabamy-bound accent, but demonstrates that after THE ROCK and FACE/OFF, he is ready for an action-hero upgrade.