Twenty years already. Twenty years of John Malkovich displaying his best psychopathic tics and Steve Buscemi in the most disturbing role of his life. Twenty years of Cameron Poe saying “There are only two people I trust. One of them is me. The other is not you.” Twenty years that for other films are a lifetime.
And yet, and unlike other productions of the time (yes, ‘Air Force One’, I’m looking at you), ‘Con Air’ remains the same brainless and overwhelming delirium. We took this anniversary to celebrate a time when action movies were bombastic and smashing, not catalogs of CGI blaze. These are the reasons for ‘Con Air’.
The producer sounded
Above any other responsible, ‘Con Air’ is a Jerry Bruckheimer film, in his first solo production after the death of Don Simpson due to drug problems, and with whom he had conceived bombings such as ‘Flashdance’, ‘Super Detective in Hollywood’, ‘Top Gun’ or ‘Days of Thunder’. ‘La roca’ had been his last collaboration, after which they had announced that they would interrupt their partnership.
Bruckheimer would go ahead, but with the changes in the winds of the Hollywood blockbuster it has been difficult for him to find a place, and although his productions continue to be celebrated with some of the excitement of yesteryearIn his career, blockbusters (‘Armaggeddon’, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, ‘The Search’) have gone hand in hand with disappointments (‘The Lone Ranger’, ‘Pearl Harbour’, ‘Prince of Persia’ ).
The Cage
Nicolas Cage had become, to the surprise of anyone who had followed his previous career (he was the guy in ‘Wild at Heart’, ‘Vampire Kisses’ and ‘Leaving Las Vegas’: neither physically nor considering his previous career did he seem to have the type) into an action movie star. And all thanks to two recent bombings: ‘The Rock’ and one of the best action movies of the nineties, ‘Face/Off’.
But without having yet developed the crazy precepts of mega-acting that would make us enjoy in ‘Wicker Man’, ‘Bad Lieutenant’ or ‘On the Limit’, Cage was already beginning to refine his type-character. That is, the guy half buzzed (because he has suffered) from unstable behavior, and who gives you a brotherly hug that strangles you in cold blood, He tells you the same thing about his daughter who hits you when you dress up as a bullfighter.
That is to say: perfect to give life to Cameron Poe, ex-ranger who kills a drunk by mistake because his fists are lethal weapons and that he is now unwittingly involved in a mass prisoner breakout on a convict airlift. The most dangerous convicts in America’s prison history: soulless sociopaths, perverts, Nazis, and kooks sentenced to life in prison or worse.
Nicolas Cage, the most unlikely action hero of all time, gives Cameron Poe a humanity unusual in the protagonists of the time. A kind of John McClane who, in order to face danger, instead of telling you a joke which is that you have to laugh with your uncle, passes the photo of the daughter you still haven’t met over your face.
That is to say: perfect to give life to Cameron Poe, ex-ranger who kills a drunk by mistake because his fists are lethal weapons and that he is now unwittingly involved in a mass prisoner breakout on a convict airlift. The most dangerous convicts in America’s prison history: soulless sociopaths, perverts, Nazis, and kooks sentenced to life in prison or worse.
Nicolas Cage, the most unlikely action hero of all time, gives Cameron Poe a humanity unusual in the protagonists of the time. A kind of John McClane who, in order to face danger, instead of telling you a joke which is that you have to laugh with your uncle, passes the photo of the daughter you still haven’t met over your face.
‘Con Air’ belongs to that era of action movies in which the villain had to be bigger than life, someone worthy of standing up to a hero who, just by wearing an empire-style shirt, already made the audience shudder. And if the bad guy came from serious cinema, all the better, to reinforce the idea of the blockbuster as a conceptual wrecking ball. Perhaps one of the first to apply this thesis was Tommy Lee Jones in ‘High Alert’.
In that same league, Cyrus the Virus plays, played by John Malkovich. that he played his role with discomfort, since practically every day there were changes in the dialogues and he did not quite understand his character. He wasn’t the only actor sulking: John Cusack hates ‘Con Air’ to the point that he’s forbidden in interviews to be asked about his agent character helping Cameron Poe from the ground.
In any case, Malkovich’s Cyrus is stupendous, an extremely intelligent sadist with a convoluted and delusional plan to escape from prison and that he is accompanied by riffraff like Danny Trejo or Ving Rhames. People as diverse as Tim Robbins, William Hurt, John Travolta, Michael Keaton, George Clooney, Rutger Hauer, Ron Perlman, Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke aspired to the role of him, but Malkovich is perfect.
One of his most celebrated henchmen is Garland Greene, played by a disturbing Steve Buscemi in his sauce. He stars in one of the most disturbing sequences in the film (because the viewer knows, in his head, how that scene ends in real life) and, considering that he is the most heartless and dangerous psychopath on the plane, It is still strange that the script shows not a little empathy with him.
A rookie with hook
Simon West, director of the film, debuted with ‘Con Air’ And we don’t think we are very far off the mark if we say that he has never touched the sky with his fingertips as much as on this occasion. West would still be in charge of a blockbuster like ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Rider’, but for a while he seems to be more comfortable in moderate B-movies. His are the wonderful ‘The mechanic’ or the devastating ‘The mercenaries 2’.
‘Con Air’, as we have mentioned, is almost more a film by Bruckheimer than by West, but to Caesar what is Caesar’s: the action sequences of ‘Con Air’ are shot with verve and compositional clarity which should make post-Nolan car chase directors green with envy, who confuse rhythm with chaos. West is far from a Michael Bay junkyard esthete, but he’s got style and a pulse.
the perfect tone
The great achievement of ‘Con Air’ is in its delirious roller-coaster tone with the potentiometers in the stratosphere. The script by Scott Rosenberg (responsible for the future reboot of ‘Jumanji’ and the spin-off of ‘Venom’) was rewritten by an uncredited Jonathan Hensleigh (an interesting guy: ‘Die Die: Revenge’ is perhaps his best script ) and at some point the two hit the perfect middle ground between excess and caricature.
‘Con Air’ is not a comedy, but it is raised as a humor classic: everyone interprets absolutely ridiculous dialogues and situations with the greatest of aplomb. Cameron Poe’s personal drama is told to us while he does crazy sit-ups. Cyrus threatens to shoot a stuffed rabbit. Characters send notes to each other by sticking them in corpses and dropping them from an airplane.
Things are so out of whack that when a plane takes off with a car literally flying behind it, Poe looks at it and blurts out that “any other day this would have been so weird“. Indeed, another day, because today this is normal. In ‘Con Air’, this is a Tuesday.
That celebrated tone of self-parody and, at the same time, impeccable staging (the aforementioned scene of the flying car, or the final climax in Las Vegas, or the interlude with a bunch of prisoners moving a plane jerkily while Ving Rhames urges them on with a whip are genuinely exciting) is what has made ‘Con Air’ a cult film. Twenty years later, it is an achievement that he keeps the throne.
And now put the rabbit back in the box.
In Espinof | The end of the policeman as a great Hollywood hero: how Nicolas Cage helped change action cinema without us knowing
a text of john tones