Con Air (1997)

Director: Simon West
Starring: Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, John Malkovich

Synopsis:
A former US Army Ranger convicted of manslaughter is paroled and is put on a flight filled with some of the nation's worst criminals. When the criminals take over the plane, he is the only one who can stop them.

Impressions:
I originally thought of this as a spiritual successor to The Rock and I suppose it holds true even after I came to realize that Michael Bay didn't direct it. Let me cut any critics off at the pass. This isn't a particularly intelligent movie. It's a bombastic action-packed popcorn flick with a colorful cast and a script chock-full of quotable lines. Nic Cage is great, sporting his hick accent from Raising Arizona and a ridiculous flowing mane. He doesn't ham it up here, but his underacting is sometime just as good as his overacting. (Just watch him outrun a fireball completely stone-faced. It's glorious.) I can praise almost the entire cast because they're what make this movie memorable. John Cusack as ally US Marshal Vince Larkin, Colm Meaney as antagonistic DEA agent Malloy, and then the main baddies portrayed by John Malkovitch, Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo, and Steve Buscemi, to say nothing of fun bit roles like Dave Chapelle as the hapless Pinball. There's plenty of good action set to a score by Mark Mancina and Trevor Rabin (which explains why I conflated a lot of Bruckheimer-produced films with Michael Bay's filmography). While not quite as superlative an example of 90s action as Speed and The Rock, this is still a good example from the era and so long as you don't take it too seriously, it's a fun ride. Give it a watch.

Rating:
Watch It