Con Air Review by Beth Ann Griese

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Starring	Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, John Malkovich
Director	Simon West
Year	1997
What it's worth		Cable (If you're sick, stuck in front of the TV, and don't have much better to do with your time...)

First, we must believe that the U.S. Marshal's office is dumb enough to put all the country's worst criminals together on one airplane. They all need to be transported to a new prison. Then we have to believe that they'll stick a couple of innocent bystanders, including a convict going home on parole, on the same plane. The story is based on the chaos that follows when the criminals, not surprisingly, manage to take over the airplane and make a break for freedom.

The criminals really are a nasty lot, and we get spooky sound effects and readings from their criminal records to let us know just how evil they each are as they board the plane. The ringleader is Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom (John Malkovich), a guy who seems to have broken about every law known to man. He's backed up by a random group of thugs, the most interesting of which is Nathan "Diamond Dog" Jones (Ving Rhames) as a black supremacist who believes in taking very direct retribution for injustices done to African-Americans. The spotlight for the con parade is stolen by the one criminal who even the criminals shun, Garland "The Marietta Mangler" Greene, played by Steve Buscemi as a quiet, unassuming little fellow who's quite crazy enough to eat your hand if you get it too near him.

Nicolas Cage plays the hero, Cameron Poe, a former Army Ranger who was sent to prison for manslaughter and now finally gets to go home to his family. Being a Ranger, he has an unbreakable code of honor, which includes that he must try to help the authorities bring down the plane, and that as long as his friend and a woman guard are on the plane, he cannot leave them behind. So he's trapped among these psychopaths running rampant and must find a way to bring the police to them without getting himself, his friend, or the guard, killed. Feminists take note - the rest of the guards are on their own, and are barely mentioned during the movie except to be pulled into the camera when needed. Poe doesn't have any problem with whatever happens to them, but the woman apparently requires his protection. Gay rights people, too, take note - one criminal who ends up on the plane never gets his record read, but his main crime seems to be that he's a flamboyant cross-dresser; there's certainly no other penchant he shows that explains why on earth he's included among the most dangerous criminals in the country, except for some sad attempts at comic relief.

Unfortunately, the Stupidity Premise requires that the law enforcement officers all make it as difficult as possible for the criminals to be brought down. John Cusack plays US Marshal Vince Larkin, the only one among them with a brain. His displays of common sense make him quite the rebel officer. The rest of the marshals, DEA agents, and local police are busy doing ridiculous things like getting extra guns onto the plane, declaring that they're drug agents in the middle of an airplane full of cons, and driving their convoys in neat lines down blind alleys to approach otherwise completely open airfields.

The sad thing is that this movie didn't require so much of the Stupidity Premise. Some movies require stupidity; if the people involved weren't stupid, the film would be over in five minutes. Con Air could have left the Stupidity Premise behind with the setup; once the criminals were all on the plane, you were left with a problem that could have been a nail-biter even if all the characters had been allowed to act with intelligence and foresight. It's too bad that we're not allowed to see that happen, a battle of wits that would have let those of us in the audience get a little more involved in the plot. The movie could have been much better for it.

What we're left with instead is thoroughly standard action movie fare. Big things explode, lots of guns get shot, people emote fear and insanity all over the screen. But it's been done, and done better, in a half-hundred other films. If you're in a mood where you must hear loud noises and see big, over-the-top stunts, then you'll get the fix you need in Con Air. But be prepared to spend a lot of time muttering "Why on earth would anyone do something that silly?"

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