Welcome To Con Air!

Rating: 6/10 (23 November 2015)

US Ranger Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage)returns home to Alabama to see his wife Tricia (Monica Potter). Poe has trouble with some of the locals and does his best to try to ignore the troublemakers. After he leaves the bar, the men spot Poe outside and start beating him up, but Poe fights back and ends up unintentionally killing one of the men. As a result of his actions, Poe is sentenced to 7 to 10 years in a state penitentiary. Poe becomes eligible for parole and boards a plane with various convicts who are being transported on the aircraft for varying reasons. However, some of the convicts have plotted an escape attempt and hold the guards and air crew hostage. Poe's conscience will not allow him to sit by and do nothing and he does everything he can to try and stop them.
Con Air isn't entirely original and shares many of its plot elements with Air Force One. Despite this though, the story isn't actually too bad. Despite the fact that Poe is a convict here, he isn't an animal like many of the others on board - he has morals and a conscience and it does mean that it's very easy to get behind Poe and his fight against the convicts. The film flows very well and for the most part the script is actually pretty good - we all know that the convicts are going to hi-jack the plane, but it can be fun sometimes to see how they're going to do it and it's clear that some thought had been put into the script. As with most action films there are plenty of wisecracks, some tongue-in-cheek humour, and the film also has a sense of menace about it which are all essential ingredients for a good action film.
The film is very well-paced and mercifully has no real padding or silly sub plots and stays very much focused on Poe trying to save the day (which was fine with me). The performances from the main cast are variable; Nic Cage is OK when he's called upon to do anything physical, but lacks any real charisma meaning that he gets by here on his likability. Monica Potter is cute, but rather bland. Malkovich is the star of the show and seems to have a lot of fun hamming it up here. He knows exactly what film he's in and really throws himself into the role. Rhames is good here too, but is very much playing second fiddle to Malkovich. Colm Meaney and John Cusack are also good in supporting roles.
Director Simon West stages the action well and once again serves up pretty much everything we come to expect from an action film. The final sequence of events was pretty exciting and overall I was fairly impressed with this film.
Con Air has everything I look for in an action film; a sense of fun, wise-cracks, tongue-in-cheek humour, a fast pace, a reasonable story and a trace of menace about it. If these are the sorts of things that you look for in an action film then you certainly won't be disappointed with this one.