Thrills! Spills! And some great lines.

Rating: Null/10 (7 June 1999)

The pitch must have been so simple: "There's this plane, right. And it's a prison plane going to a maximum security penitentiary, right. And you've got all the most evil, insane, screwed up criminals on it, right. And they hi-jack the plane in mid-air! But, there's one wrongly convicted, ex-ranger on board who's being released and is just on the plane to get a ride home to his wife and daughter, who he's never actually seen. So, he has to beat all the crim's, warn the authorities, get control of the plane, and get back to his family." Oh, brother. Did I mention Jerry Bruckheimer is producing this one?
There are absolutely no prizes for guessing who wins, who loses and who gets the particularly queazy death scene. The outcome is signposted before you even enter the theatre, let alone five minutes in. But be fair, what did you expect? This is gourmet popcorn of the highest order. It rises above lower event films like ID4 and Batman & Robin simply because it has no intention of being anything more than what it is: two hours of violent, funny and very good looking eye candy.
Cage and Cusack do what you expect. They're dudley-do-right's that wouldn't return a library book late. But both of them have their harder sides. Cage is sent to prison for man-slaughter during the credits. BUT HE WAS ONLY ACTING IN SELF-DEFENSE AND TO PROTECT HIS FIANCE. Which is pretty much what he does throughout the entire film. Whenever Cage does anything it's either to protect himself or some other helpless person, be they a shackled female prison guard or his prisoner best friend with diabetes. Cage is a great actor but here he's obviously in Bruce Willis sweaty vest mode and plays it to the hilt. Cusack retains a little more dignity but gets less airtime as a result. It's still good to see him in something a little more high-profile than his usual choice but he's obviously just doing it for the self-advertising (it worked).
But the show stealers are the villains. Being a nice guy is okay but it's better to a really cool bad guy instead. This films full of them. Malkovich and Rhames lead the nasties and Malkovich does his In The Line Of Fire routine with more energy than you could believe. Rhames gets to be Marcellus Wallace again. He's happy. The rest are a bunch of straight-to-video faves with stupid names like 'Bedlam' Billy and Johnny 23 but they're evil, sick and marvellously cool. Buscemi cameos with his gibbering Lecter-a-like and almost steals the show from Malkovich. He fails of course. Nobody steals the limelight like John Malkovich.
He's given free reign to do so with a script which has more one liners than plot exposition. Some of them are dumb. Some of them hit the mark. Most of them do the latter by being the former. She the Quotes section for the good ones but Buscemi's definition of irony really stands out: "A bunch of idiots on a plane singing a song made famous by a band that died in a planecrash." It's with the script that this film will lose or gain it's audience. Half of you will just roll with it and enjoy the stupidity (such as threats like "put the bunny back in the box") while the rest will just wave it off as utter trash. When the script gives way to the action sequences they suceed due to Simon Wests zippy direction. Like a combination of Woo, Scott and Cameron he slo-mos, explodes or machine guns most of the cast and set. Again you'll either enjoy or get bored.
I enjoyed it as the big budget explosion that it obviously was. But I must warn you that this is not the best action film out there. The Rock and Die Hard beat it by miles because sometimes the gags do fall flat, sometimes the cast get a little too hammy and sometimes the "Oh, pah-lease!' moments get a little too much. The saccharine, sugar-coated beginning and end are a little annoying as well but the ninety-minutes in between make up for that. Better at the cinema than the video but if you need action, excitement and a good laugh then here's the very thing. Buckle up!