Con Air: A Cinematic Traffic Accident I Can't Ignore

By Ren

I guess humans, as a species, have a predilection to do things that do harm unto themselves. Smoking, drugs, bull riding, and shopping cart jousting are but a few examples of this biological programming.


I bet you thought I was making this shit up.

I, too, suffer from the sucktitude that is our self destructive DNA. Sure, I've done all the shit I listed above, but none of that compares to what I found myself doing a few nights ago. It's something I'm not proud of. It's something a girl would never let her parents discover. Porn? No, dude I wish! I'd be the fucking porn queen of the Pacific Northwest! But, only the classy shit. None of that cable guy coming by to tighten my connection bullshit. Movies with real plot and soul. Movies that explore the depths of the characters' being before the 30 minute long fuckapalooza. My porn would be so good, it would go mainstream. 100 years from now, the Academy will still be talking about that Irish porn star who won every Oscar that record setting night. Somehow, I would have gotten the award for best foreign film. It doesn't matter how! Point is my shit would sweep the Academy awards and, probably, the Emmys.

Finally a bigger whore than Sean Penn will win an Oscar.

Where the fuck was I going with this? Oh yea. I found myself doing something the other night I wasn't proud of. There I was, on the couch, in the dark... watching Con Air. I'm sorry Mom and Pop! Your little girl is ashamed. Despite all you taught her as a child, she still lost her way and drifted into the shameful life of watching a movie with Nicholas Cage, John Malkovich, John Cusack, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Chief O'Brien from Next Gen/DS9, and Danny Trejo. Danny motherfucking Trejo!

Otherwise known as the MexiCAN from Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

I was channel surfing around 2 in the morning. Going through the channel guide aimlessly, I saw that Con Air was being played AGAIN. For reasons unknown, one of the premium movie channels has had a Con Air hard on for a month. The bastard is on no less than twice a day. I joke about it. I make fun of it when I notice it's on. But, before I knew it, I was pressing "ENTER" on the remote to watch it.

Above: Immediate access to damnation.

I figured I would just watch it while I continued to scroll through the program guide. Scroll, scroll, scroll... holy monkey fuck! There's nothing on! It's been so long since I've seen this movie. Hey, the entire first act is complete shit. Why am I watching a movie as lifeless as the eyes of a bored stripper?

So, Nick Cage was put in prison for defending himself and his wife? Harsh.

I forgot that, in order to get to the more important story lines, Jerry Bruckheimer raced through the entire set up. One minute Cage is wearing an Army uniform , sporting a receding hairline with short hair. The next minute he's wearing a wife beater, sporting a receding hairline with long hair.

I'm going to let the whole muddled, ear rape of a Southern accent thing Cage has going on pass. It was as annoying as sand in your ass crack, but if Keanu Reeves got away with his shit-tasticly horrific "British" accent in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Cage can slide on this one.

"Like, cheerio and pip pip. Whoa, I know Kung Fu."

I was trapped in a cinematic mind grip. I couldn't change the channel. Dave Chappelle? Oh yea, I forgot he was in this... for ten minutes. Damn. Why can't I be watching Chappelle's Show now?

With a case of Samuel Jackson.

I can't tell you exactly why I was stuck in the Con Air tractor beam. It's like a traffic accident, except you rubber-neck for an hour and a half. Maybe it's more like 2 Girls 1 Cup. The whole thing is bile swallowing terrible, but you can't stop watching it. And you can't help but make others watch it with you.

The love story sub plot between these two was the visual equivalent of eating your own shit.

Part of the magic of movies is to make you care about the characters. We want Sherlock Holmes to foil the dastardly plot while managing his own batshit crazy personality. For the first time in my relatively short history as a human being, I cared about Will Ferrell. OK, that's exaggerating a bit. I cared for Harold Crick in Stranger Than Fiction. When I watched Patriot Games I felt for the characters, deeply. OK, I sympathized with the IRA in the movie. Does it matter? The point is that I was under the movie's spell to feel for these people. Does the movie magic work for Con Air? Magic 8 Ball, guide us in our quest for truth.

I don't give a three year old yak shit about anyone in this movie. I'm not emotionally invested in this heaping pile of angry stereotypes. Well, maybe the plane. That poor thing didn't as for this. It didn't ask to be the sound stage of a movie only drunk people at 2 in the morning watch. What? Yeah, I was drunk too. You gotta issue with that? I was drunk and on the couch watching Con Air in my undies. You have a fucking problem with that?

I didn't think so.

Back to the point, I felt sorry for the plane. It sat there while cinematic gems, like these, were vomited out in front of the camera.



Run this segment at random. Go ahead. Fast forward, hit play, whatever. The fucker is 10 minutes long. I guarantee that each and every word the actors spat at each other caused rivets to pop from the plane. By the end, if you look closely, the C-123 was praying for death. Each time Ving pushed out a monotone "Grrrrr grumble grumble" the plane would cut its proverbial wrists just a little deeper. Shit, not to mention all the paint peeling body odor and, what would later be know as, the leaky bean farts of 97. I'm so sorry plane.

That'll do plane. That'll do.

Then, for some reason known only to the functionally retarded kid making script changes, the characters of DEA agent Duncan Malloy has a unprovoked, misplaced, tacked on loathing for US Marshal Vince Larkin. There's no rhyme or reason for it. As soon as they meet, Chief O'Brein starts giving shitting all over Martin Q. Blank from Grosse Pointe Blank. Why? Did Larkin sleep with Malloy's wife? Are they childhood chums gone bad? Someone tell us that there is more to this dynamic than random chest beating cock waving!

Nope. There's nothing deeper.

And then there's the whole bunny scene. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be funny or ironic. Maybe it was supposed to break up the colon clenching action. No, I'm pretty sure some fucker just tacked it on as a joke and no one noticed until the screening. I'm also pretty positive that killing people over a child's toy is common place during the holiday shopping season.


Still, somehow Cage manages to take this "funny" scene and give it the Hershey squirts.

Oh, come the fuck on! Really?

At this point in the movie, I was pretty pissed at myself for watching it. What the fuck is wrong with me? Jumping Irish Jesus now Cage is under a truck talking to himself? Exactly how the fuck did a dozen or so prisoners pull a full sized C-123 out of the sand? Does being shirtless help?

Prison must have one hell of a weight lifting program. That's what you want; convicted murderers, arsonists, and rapists getting buff.

Oh, yeah. Then Cage does the whole "I'm running from an explosion and flip through the air in a way that gives physics the finger" thing.

Because, as we all learned in school, fire is slow and can be easily outrun.

Somewhere between when Chief O'Brein's car being destroyed and the mid-air fire fight, I just accepted it. I was watching Con Air. It's too late now. I can't turn the channel, I have too much invested in it. I have to see it through. I have to see every last fudge sacking second, now. Besides, this movie makes menstrual cramps feel awesome in comparison.

Ouch, my uterus! This is STILL better than watching Con Air.

Yippie! The plane crashed and people die. Someone or another gets cut in half by an engine prop blade, someone else, I don't know, gets killed in some way. I guess the lamest part was when Nick Cage and John CuSACK jump on police motorcycles and give each other a "let's get 'em" look.


Awwww. They even finish each other's sentences.

So, in the end, the bad guys are punished, destroying the Las Vegas strip is completely OK, and Nick Cage gives his on screen daughter a soggy, dirty stuffed bunny. Way to go, Poe. You gave the daughter you've never met typhoid.

Something like this, but soggy and with the faint scent of prisoner urine and man on man rape.

I blame myself. I was drunk enough to get trapped into watching this movie, but not drunk enough to forget about it. At least it wasn't Short Circuit 2 this time.

I may have only been 3 when this was released, but even then I knew this movie sucked copious amounts of sweaty dick.