Con Air

Welcome to Con Air, your number one airlines if you are super butt. Like Nickelback? You'll love Con Air. Like penis measuring? Con Air is your favorite. Think Jerry Bruckheimer is a good producer, kiss our collective ass. This movie sucks.

The movie is about the impossible. Going to prison for a crime that you wouldn't get charged with, Cage's Alabama accent, his hair, the concept of the prison plane, Colm Meaney having a job, and the lack of geographical understanding. None of it works. The villain's plan doesn't make a lick of sense and the "good" guys plans don't help. Even Nic Cage's "Cameron Poe" breaks his own rules for the sake of "action".

So we're big action fans. Does this movie have good action? Nope. Too much slow motion and shirtless guys trying to look cool. Does it have a lot of action? Nope. There's a disparaging lack of anything happening in this film. This is supposed to be a "roller-coaster ride". I remember roller-coasters being exciting for the entire time. This really only has two 10 minute actions sequences which amounts to 17% of the movie. If you went on a roller-coaster that only got up to speed 17% of the time, you probably wouldn't be thrilled.

Then there's the music. It's wall to wall shit. If Nickelback had a baby with Toby Keith then you've got this soundtrack. Its inescapable. Take a look at Cage's hair and you can paint the three-chord guitar in your mind.

It's fairly uneventful and completely moronic but it's worth checking out on a revisit ONLY for the sake of realizing how really, really bad it is. Otherwise, you've got better things to do with your time.

Individual Ratings:

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Cheesy effects:
Horrendous acting:
Laugh-out-loud-ability:
Ridiculous stunts:
Gratuitous nudity:
Memorable one-liners:
Riffability:

Overall Ratings:

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Streaming Do's and Don'ts

• Skiptrace - Netflix
• Zindy, The Swamp Boy - Amazon Prime (w/ Rifftrax)
• Deathrow Gameshow - Amazon Prime
• Nightmare at Noon (Deathstreet USA) - Amazon Prime (w/ Rifftrax)

About Con Air - Movie Information

Sam's Boring Bullshit

Weeks ago I had finally pulled the trigger on Armageddon. This, however, was not a simple task as to get the film to pass through our panel veto process I had to threaten to do a run of Bruckheimer movies. In classic fashion I am just doing said run anyway. This week’s film, Con Air, appears to be the only entry in my run that has met universal acceptance, causing me to ponder a switch to Face Off from Days of Thunder for my next entry, because I am a dick.

Simon west made his directorial debut with Con Air. West would go on to bring us quality films such as, The General’s Daughter, Laura Croft --Tomb Raider and The Expendables 2. His most recent project we have talked about on the podcast, albeit briefly was Wild Card. This guy doesn’t make good movies but the start he got may not have helped anything. Reportedly Don Simpson refused to make this film when he and Bruckheimer were still partners. Yes a coked out guy who died on the toilet wouldn’t green light this thing. I was going to list the films he did as a thorn to this picture, but if you look at what Bruckheimer did with Simpson and what he did ex post facto, the coked out walking hard-on was the brains of the operation.

I can’t name names because it would take forever but the long and the short of it is that pretty much everyone in acting was offered a role in this film and the cast are the ones who said yes, and ultimately regret it. Though the film’s North American box office returns of $101 million exceeded it’s $75 million budget, most of the actors have come to regret being in the “Blockbuster”. This is of course excepting Steve Bushemi who doesn’t really give a fuck what movies he is in. Cusack refuses to do interviews about the film, he’ll talk about Drive Angry all day, not this one though.

Cusack’s refusal to talk about Con Air reflects the out of control nature of the early Bruckheimer movies. When we did Armageddon several weeks ago we found out what a sprawling train wreck the production was, this was actually worse. How you say? Well they actually killed a guy on Con Air’s set. Special Effects veteran Phil Swartz was killed by one of the plane rigs. They dedicated the film to him, because that is what he would have wanted, a footnote on the piece of shit that killed him. Beyond that the setups were taking so long that Nic Cage was able to lift weights in between takes and Malkovich almost quit as the script was apparently re-written daily. The daily re-writes are the hallmark of the Bruckheimer train wreck. I don’t know that he has ever changed his mind but, especially early on Jerry just didn’t care if there was a script. He treated it like underwear, sure you’re supposed to wear them but you don’t really need them. For him a picture was a tag line and a series of his visions that all had explosions in them. The quality of his films and their constantly troubled productions are a product of the “Bruckheimer Method”.

KAEOF: Cage apparently spent a bunch of time in Alabama perfecting his accent, Does this work? Is it apparent that Malkovich’s scenes were re-written daily? Is it also apparent that Dave Chappelle ad-libs all of his lines?