Former US Army Ranger, Cameron Poe, has just been paroled for manslaughter, but must stop a group of violent and deadly criminals from escaping the country after they seize control of the prison transport plane he is on.
Released in 1997, “Con Air” follows Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage), a recently paroled Army Ranger who finds himself trapped aboard a prisoner transport plane after a group of dangerous inmates takes control. What starts as a relatively simple hijacking quickly spirals into a two-hour parade of increasingly ridiculous action set pieces, colorful criminals, explosions, crashes, and an almost impressive amount of destruction.
I love a movie that knows exactly what kind of movie it is, and “Con Air” absolutely knows it’s ridiculous. The entire screenplay feels like someone sat in a room coming up with increasingly absurd action scenarios that could only happen in a movie, then somehow convinced a studio to actually film them all. At one point, a vintage Corvette gets hooked to the back of a massive plane, dragged through the air, smashed into an air traffic control tower, and explodes into a fireball while its owner watches it happen and reacts like someone scratched his car in a parking lot. That is “Con Air” in a nutshell.
This is a big, dumb action movie, and I mean that almost entirely as a compliment. I spent most of the runtime enjoying how ridiculous everything was while also being impressed by the sheer effort that went into destroying things. Cars being smashed and crashed, buildings exploding, entire environments getting obliterated, people being thrown through walls, and practically every action sequence seems determined to cause more property damage than the one before it. There’s something genuinely charming about watching a movie with this much practical destruction. The explosions are huge, the stunt work is ridiculous, and you can actually see how much planning went into pulling everything off. It made me miss this particular flavor of ‘90s action movie where blowing something up seemed to be the solution to almost every filmmaking problem.
The cast also makes “Con Air” an incredibly fun nostalgia watch. John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Danny Trejo, Ving Rhames, and a completely unexpected Dave Chappelle all show up and understand exactly what kind of movie they’re in. Chappelle especially brings this hilarious energy that perfectly fits the movie’s unserious tone, and I honestly wish there were more of him. Then there’s Mykelti Williamson, who played Bubba in “Forrest Gump,” basically going through another version of the same tragic best-friend character arc. It feels so weirdly familiar that it almost becomes meta.
The script is unbelievably corny, but again, that’s part of the appeal. The jokes constantly lighten the mood and keep the violence from ever becoming too dark. The movie basically grabs you by the shoulders and says, “Hey, none of this is serious. Just go with it.” And once I did, I had a great time. And because “Con Air” is extremely violent, with tons of cops and criminals being either shot, stabbed, crushed, blown up, thrown out of things, or generally treated like disposable action figures for two hours, the tone never makes that violence feel especially brutal. It’s all in service of crazy destruction, bombastic fights, ridiculous explosions, and seeing how much chaos the filmmakers can squeeze onto the screen.
Oddly enough, my biggest problem is Nicolas Cage. I know that probably sounds insane considering this is one of his most recognizable roles, but I honestly think he’s miscast. Between the accent and his strangely stiff line delivery, Cage feels like he wandered in from a completely different movie. Everyone around him is chewing scenery and having the time of their lives, while he plays Cameron Poe with a weird sincerity that never quite clicked for me. Somehow, in a movie this absurd, Nicolas Cage is the person who feels out of place.
The premise is simple enough that “Con Air” can basically use it as an excuse to throw this collection of criminals with wildly different personalities into increasingly insane situations and watch what happens. Most of the time, that works incredibly well. Then there are moments where I genuinely have no idea what anyone was thinking, like Steve Buscemi sitting down with a little girl and singing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” while, not too far away, inmates and law enforcement are basically engaged in a small war on an airfield. It’s one of the strangest tonal decisions in the entire movie. It’s bizarre, yet somehow exactly the type of thing “Con Air” would do.
That’s ultimately why I had so much fun with it. “Con Air” is bad, but it’s bad in exactly the right ways. It’s corny, absurd, excessively violent, unbelievably stupid in a movie logic kind of way, and completely committed to entertaining you. Turn your brain off, stop asking questions, and let a bunch of great character actors destroy several million dollars’ worth of property while Nicolas Cage attempts a Southern accent. Sometimes that’s all I want from a movie.
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