Con-Air plays out like an incongruent roller coaster, appearing at times very action packed and making you hang onto your seat, but just when it gets on a good roll, the brakes come on, the action stops, and a feeble attempt at emotion, story and character development is made.
It can’t make up it’s mind if it wants to be a love story with action, a story of conflict between good and bad, young and old, the smart and the not-so smart, so in the end, it suffers from becoming none of what it wanted, a jigsaw puzzle which does not quite fit, but in pieces looks impressive.
It sports a very talented cast, best of all is John Malkovich, as the well-educated, wise cracking psychopath Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom (one of my new favorite nicknames, ranking with Hannibal the Cannibal) oddly enough an interesting tie-in, since Steve Buscemi plays "The Marietta Mangler" a highly disturbed soft spoken head case, who could easily pass for Lecter’s illegitimate son. Yet Buscemi and the rest of the cast are sadly wasted, Buscemi is a great talent, his creepy low-key demeanor, showcased best in Reservoir Dogs and Fargo, is trotted out too late in the movie, toyed with briefly, then seemingly thrown at us whenever the filmmakers lacked anything better to show us. Nicholas Cage (who still has not recovered from his "Leaving Las Vegas" Oscar hangover..) seemingly just added a Southern drawl to his character from the Rock (call him Forrest Rambo), and in another fitting piece of irony, Cage’s cohort is played by Mykelti Williamson (Bubba, the master of the shrimp recipe).
The most wasted piece of talent in Con-Air though is John Cusack, who has still yet to show the promise bestowed upon him after 1987’s amazing coming-of-age masterpiece "Say Anything"
He shows no emotion, could’ve been played by any nameless, faceless actor, and in the end, just looks silly trying to play a gun-toting action here. John, dance with one who brung ya, leave the action to those who are a bit less endowed in the head, and more endowed in the pectorals (yes my thespian Van Damme, you are one of whom I speak).
In the end though, I would feel remiss by not recommending "Con-Air" to you, it makes a good Saturday afternoon, relaxing after the heat, workman’s paradise, but for the rest, save the money now, Rent it later.
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