A good cast can't save an awful script

Rating: 1/10 (4 May 2003)

Were Con Air a parody, it would have been one of the best action flicks of the '90s. Unfortunately, they played this truly awful script straight, and the result is one of the worst action flicks I've ever seen. It's like watching a 90 minute trainwreck in slow motion. I'd rather watch Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire again - at least that film was good for a few laughs, and had some imagination (lamebrained though it was). Con Air is about as original as asphalt on a highway.
The only surprising thing about this film is the sheer number of good, or at least competent actors stuck in it, including Malkovich, Buscemi, Colm Meaney and John Cusack. I'm assuming they were all offered a fortune, and probably figured this stinker of a script would either get cleaned up while in production, or that their combined talents would allow them to rise above it. It wasn't, and they can't. As writer Mike Judge once had his characters Beavis and Butthead observe on their old television program, you can't polish a turd.
Oh, and Nicolas Cage has become - without question - the most overrated actor in Hollywood. I loved this guy in flicks like Raising Arizona, but he has almost systematically turned himself into cinema's premier soulless action film "hero". His performance in this flick is tee vee movie of the week atrocious, and he sports what has to be the worst southern accent since Streisand's ludicrous attempt at one in Hello Dolly a generation ago. If it weren't for his inexplicable "status" as an A-List star, giving him first pass on fantastic scripts like Adaptation, this guy would be waiting tables in his uncle's restaurant. Here's some free advice, Nicky boy  having your character march around like he's in desperate need of a thousand pounds of Metamucil *isn't* acting. If it were, Madonna would be the next Katherine Hepburn.