The most classic anti-example

Rating: 1/10 (30 September 2005)

This film is the most classic anti-example of a movie, ever created in the history of the world's "drive" towards artistic perfection. Obviously from time to time the searches and the aspirations to get to this perfection can lead to a disaster so "perfect", that in it you cannot find anything... GOOD, actually - even if you search with subatomic microscope. "Con Air" has achieved this "perfection" to the full, but multiplied by minus one.
And yet, you cannot create a nice and decent film only by doing the opposite to what the script-writers, the director, the actors and the producers of "Con Air" did. You cannot do it simply by multiplying with (-1). Cause there is one thing in "Con Air", which equals zero: and it is the plot - the vision, the ideas, the messages, which every movie has to have. And as it has no plot and no reasoning, apart from the wish of the its makers to show us unimaginably ridiculous pile of crap that they intended to label "an action movie for fun", you see the point: when you multiply anything by zero, you will get zero again.
The conclusion is clear: you cannot make a film without a core, and the core of every film is some kind of an noticeable idea. Only the comedies (and not all of them) are excused of that need, but then it has to be replaced by a continuous number of really good jokes, tricks and comic situations. Take "Blue streak" as an example: what it would be without the lost diamond, or without the main character being black? Only some stupid chases and shootings will remain. But how he tried to retrieve the diamond, and the comic situations that came from it - this is enough to create a good, fun action movie. Just don't take it seriously, when you lack the big idea to tell!
The idea is indispensable for a serious movie - so if you don't have what to say to the world, you will never make even the slightest kind of a good non-comedy movie - even with a billion dollar budget at your disposal. In this case - depending on what your social status is - better go wash dishes, or continue to drive your daddy's $200,000 jeep, that he gave you for your birthday. While if you have a good idea and you don't want to spoil it tragically, watch "Con Air", and watch it at least 20 times, and oblige everybody from your future film-making team to watch it, cause there - in the most vivid, noticeable and "classic" way - it is shown HOW NOT TO MAKE A MOVIE. It can also be used as a certain kind of "barometer": whoever has actually liked it and didn't find how shallow and silly it is, is himself exceptionally stupid. To be more specific, he is more stupid than one hundred thousand sitting ducks, staring at a ticking bomb right in front of them.
This film has in it - in compacted and very accessible form - EVERY SINGLE THING THAT YOU HAVE TO AVOID, when you make a movie. The idiotic dialogues; the terribly overexposed, mostly misplaced and pointless effects; the obvious physical impossibility of so many scenes that were supposed to be "for real"; the irritating, horrible acting of so many of the cast - who probably were contesting for the "Triple worst actor" Golden Raspberry awards; the infinite clichés - especially this about the innocent convict, who not only has to beat the bad guys, but also the police, the government and the military, which, of course, are not aware of the situation, so unwillingly help the bad ones and handicap the hero - yet he will overcome the difficulties (or rather - the impossibilities) and prevail in the end - and they will arrive only to witness the spoils of his smashing victory, to shake his hand and to apologize that they almost killed him (I'm not sure if "the-authority-shakes-hands-and-thanks-the-hero-for-the-good-job" scene was in the film, but in the last minutes it had turned into such an omnipotent mess, that my head turned into a pumpkin); and on top of it - the serial child killer, who happened to be so nice person: this almost brought me to tears; and so many more - from beginning to end, embroidered in every second of this movie disaster... I actually can't count them all, without breaching the 1000 words limit.
Despite all said above, from an ironical point of view "Con Air" has a value. I gave it the lowest possible rating, because it was the worst movie ever created, but I also have written this comment about it. There are worse films than "Con Air", but they are so unnoticeable, they cannot earn even that "label" - "THE WORST MOVIE" - as not only me, but nobody would ever watch them. While this one had a relatively prominent cast, Nicolas Cage in first place, and I kept watching it to find how bad it will go, and to see the disaster from the whole perspective. It caught my attention with its HORRIBLE, YET CLASSICAL WEAKNESSES. And what about the actors? What they played is always played by total "beginners", not by career actors, and as they are totally unknown, nobody notices the movie also. Yet these ones were moderately well-known in Hollywood, I think. We have to pay them a tribute: they destroyed - if not their careers - at least their reputation, in order to give us this classic anti-example of a movie.
It is the most vivid, conspicuous film that you have to watch in order to find what kind of films you must never watch.