Junk-food cinema for the Nintendo generation.

Rating: Null/10 (25 June 2003)

There are two kinds of action flicks as far as I'm concerned  the elaborate, well-thought out vehicles that suck the viewer in with good characterization and worthwhile plots (stuff like "Die Hard," "The Fugitive" and "True Lies" to name a few recent cinematic highlights in this genre), and the ones that rely on explosions, relentless fight scenes, big budgets and plenty o' effects ("Eraser," "Die Hard II," "Rambo," and any number of action sequels). "Con Air" is wedged somewhere between the two, though closer to "Die Hard II" -- you sorta care about a few of the characters, but not enough to stand up and root for them unabashed. Still, it doesn't really matter, because by the final lap Jerry Bruckheimer has reduced the film to action-mockery and Explosions R Us (the same fate "The Fifith Element" suffered).
Bruckheimer, with his late partner Don Simpson, engineered flicks like "Beverly Hills Cop," "Top Gun," "Days of Thunder" and "The Rock"  "Con Air" is more of the same; a film that feels more like an arcade-game than a work of art. It's junk-food cinema for the Nintendo generation.
The star of the show, Nicolas Cage's ex-Army Ranger Cameron Poe, is finally getting out of lock-up after eight years to see his family; imprisoned for defending his pregnant wife in a bar fight and killing a hooligan (personally, froma legal standpoint, I don't see how he could have gotten sent up river, but hey, this is Hollywood). So, for God-knows-what-reason, he's sent aboard a C-123K plane in the Air Transport division of the U.S. Marshal's Service, a carrier that transporting some of the nation's most dangerous felons across the country to a new super-maximum security facility. But guess what -- Poe suddenly finds himself mixed up in a carefully detailed skyjacking masterminded by Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom (played unequivocally by Malkovich). And, as you might guess, Poe becomes a reluctant hero, fighting to thwart Cyrus and his band of "lifers" from massacring everyone on board as the damaged plane careens toward disaster on the famed Las Vegas strip. The criminal superstars are probably the best part of the film: there's Malkovich (awesome in every role he's played), black militant Nathan `Diamond Dog' Jones (Ving Rhames), Johnny 23 (Danny Trejo) and Garland Greene (Steve Buscemi), a serial killer who arrives on board encased in custom-made restraints patterned after Hannibal Lecter's in "The Silence of the Lambs."
The film's most riveting scene comes when Buscemi, the soft-spoken serial-killer, has tea with a little girl who's likely to become his next victim  the little girl and he instead sing `He's Got the Whole World In His Hands.' Other than that, and a few other scenes, the movie is basically a procession of swift set-ups, oddball characters, spiked colloquy and action sequences. If you like bright lights, loud noises, guns and explosions  don't miss this one!