"I'm goner show you God does exist"

Rating: 7/10 (7 February 2002)

`Oh the Action Movie', as a child of the eighties I was practically raised on a diet of loud explosions, simple scenarios, white vests and killer one liners. So with so many action films around, why do I turn my attention to the only slightly above average `Con Air'? Well, for a start, I watched it last night and it's still fresh in my mind, but besides that Con Air represents every aspect of the turning point of the action movie. So it's one small step for entertainment, one giant leap for Jerry Bruckheimer's bank balance. The simple scenario of Con Air involves Parolee Cameron Poe (Cage) hitching a ride home to his wife after a seven-year sentence for murder. Of Course Cage didn't mean to destroy the hillbillies' vocal chords at the start of the film, that wouldn't be very heroic, instead he is protecting the honour of his ladylove. This being Hollywood, we couldn't let the hero be a real killer, but that doesn't stop the film-makers populating the rest of the film with the most adorable host of paedophiles, rapists, and murderers, some of whom only serve as nothing more than comic relief.
You see, this is the big plot mover in Con Air, every action movie has a plot mover, be it the taking of the Building in Die Hard, or Sarah Conner's decision to run in The Terminator, in Con Air, as luck would have it, Cameron Poe is being delivered out of captivity on a prison airplane. Not just any airplane mind, this one is filled with said jolly bunch of paedophiles, rapists, and murderers and as if we couldn't guess, the maniacs end up taking over the asylum. What follows may not be Bergman, but it does constitute as some damn fine, time tested entertainment, for as we all know Bruckheimer is of the, `if it ain't broke don't fix it' school of producing, so here we have a (just under) two hour re-hash of Bad Boys, The Rock and Top Gun. The film follows the path we would expect it to and ends in exactly the way we knew it would, but it doesn't matter how tired and predictable the film may be, because it does what it's supposed to do, and that is to deliver a solid piece of mind-diverting entertainment with all the loud explosions, white vests and killer one liners (`Buckle-up') that any action film fan craves for.
Elsewhere, the acting, for this kind of film anyway, is first class, with a definite ensemble at play. Besides Cage, who continues his role of the action hero that he perfected in The Rock, and later carried through to Face-Off, this time however, delivering all his lines with an hilarious deep southern twang (`Dis iz your Barbeque an it taste gud' is just one side splitter), but adding to his star power we also have the two Johnnies, Cusack and Malkovich as the Good and Bad elements. Both are good in their respected roles and there is fine support from Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames and Colm Meaney. To top it all off, the director is Simon West (aka Michael Bay without pretension) who applies an unbelievable amount of colour filters and MTV editing, that we have now come to expect from the Hollywood crap factory. So to finish, Con Air is a decent enough action movie that washes over the brain and leaves you punching the air with excitement, it may not be high art, but it's still a pretty fun ride. 7/10