Con Air (1997)

Most of what there is to say about Con Air has already been said by the countless reviewers: it is inexplicably conceived and bizarrely performed. It was 1997, the same year as Face/Off, and it was right at the end of the period of time Nicolas Cage could be taken seriously as an actor.

This movie is aware that it exists as a ridiculous action movie, but the question as to whether or not Nicolas Cage was in on the joke is something else altogether. His accent is truly baffling and more frustratingly, inconsistent. He’s an “ex-con” (his crime very easily an argument of self defense, but sure) on an air travel prisoner transfer, and the other criminals take over the plane. Hi-jinks occur of both comedic and deadly varieties.

The humour is ridiculous, presumably unintentional at times, and the plot is absolutely absurd. The exposition is extraordinarily clunky and lumped up all together in giant blocks. I rolled my eyes more times than I could count. There are all of these factors of absurdity that should make this move a steaming pile of garbage...and yet.

There is something tremendously watchable about Con Air. Even though the performances are over the top and often terrible, there is a degree of self awareness to almost all of them. John Malkovich just goes for it, and Steve Buscemi is in top form. More Steve Buscemi, I say. Let's have a Buscemissance. Even though I didn’t care about the plot on the ground in the movie and wanted that to hurry up, I was wrapped up in the hilarious fake pyrotechnics. I didn’t give two hoots about the emotional stakes set up by the beginning of the story, but they established a strong in-flight emotional subplot that worked much better for me. The one liners are possibly the strength of the whole movie and they are truly spectacular. There's some stuff about a stuffed bunny rabbit that still works twenty years on, even when you've absorbed the punchlines via pop cultural osmosis.

Sometimes a movie doesn't have to be expressly good. Sometimes it's just got to be a good time to watch.

Rating: 4.5/10 - Hilarious, eminently watchable, but not really a good movie. And we're talking objectively deeply flawed without the outright ridiculousness and sense of fun Face/Off had.