If brainless is your brand you will love it

Rating: Null/10 (2 October 2011)

I happen to like thinking. Therefore the film does nothing for me.
"Con Air" is the zeitgeist of American Hollywood film society circa 1997. There was a time in big budget film when viewers were required to think even a tad little bit to understand what is occurring on screen. Not now. Instead it is "tell me 100% instead of "show me." The screen play writing that must have occurred: "OK...all the convicts are getting on the plane. We must tell the audience exactly who the characters are. We do this by having the supposedly good cops list off simplistic statements while the convicts go from bus to plane and are superfluously searched by a bigoted guard making statements to bring the characters to life."
Almost every statement that anyone makes in the film shall be a single line of snappy dialog. We will allow for a couple lines to set up the mastermind of the operation. He is a (I can almost quote the film exactly because the dialog is so banal) 'product of the criminal system having lived his whole life in it...a moron who was illiterate when he came in and now has a law degree...and killed like 20 people both in and outside the prison system.' He gets locked in the cage like an animal. He and Hero Nick Cage have a single line of hate with each other to set up that they will not get along.
We have the line up introduced. We have the black guy with the do-rag. Of course, why not. We have the mouth inspection and the bad breath comment as a joke for having sex breath. All the while what are basically voice overs with a shot of human body to occupy the screen say things like: "This one is so bad...(cue the audience to say "How bad was he?" like Gene Rayburn on Match game episode)..."he did this and that evil thing." All the while the whole set up going on of loading this plane of prisoners is so incredibly ridiculous in premise that my head was beating itself on the wall. Unless there is a need to have all these incredibly evil men...with one good guy...to be transported by air all at once...so that they can all go to the exact same place...there is no way that this could happen.
So...you must believe that people in law enforcement are incredibly stupid. They say and do incredibly stupid things and are very one dimensional. I mean, if you are transporting the "unholiest of unholies (save one)" then wouldn't the crew already know who is being transported BEFORE the arrival at the airplane? Wouldn't they have a staff meeting to do some prisoner planning and contingency planning? And what about the guy in a cage on an airplane for a few hours? What if he has...oh...an accident of mother nature while in the cage? Would you really want this person escorted to the bathroom on a flying airplane? Wouldn't the ACLU be up in arms about cruel and inhuman punishment?
"Suspension of Belief" is something that usually requires a an audience to have suspend belief. Con Air doesn't require that to happen. It gets more and more ridiculous as stupid decision is compounded by stupid decision to make the big explosions and fight scenes occur. If you have no belief to suspend you will love it. Otherwise you will find it painful.