Con- Air is a decent big budget film starring everyone from Nicholas Cage to John Malkovich and John Cusack. The synopsis is basic: A ranger tows aboard a transport plane full of convicts led by John Malkovich. They soon take over the plane and all hell ensues. This was a decent film and Malkovich is really good playing against type but seeing this film now where 100 million dollar pyrotechnique are common in every other film Con Air lacks the punch.

Con Air was directed by Simon West and stars our lord and saviour Nicholas Cage, John Malkovich and John Cuasck. ​Just-paroled army ranger Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) is headed back to his wife (Monica Potter), but must fly home aboard a prison transport flight dubbed "Jailbird" with some of the worst criminals living. Along with Diamond Dog (Ving Rhames) and Baby-O (Mykelti Williamson), genius serial killer Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom (John Malkovich) unleashes a violent escape plot in mid-flight. Secretly working with U.S. Marshall Vince Larkin (John Cusack), Poe tries to foil Grissom's plan.This movie can be genuinely summed up with the simple phrase 'PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX'. Nothing more needs to be said but I took notes while watching so why not? All the acting was great in this movie, it has a cheesy, stupid story, dialogue straight from the word of God and absurd action. This movie is the best bad movie I've ever seen in my entire life. It shouldn't be as good as it is. I wholeheartedly recommend this movie; it's pure, unfiltered stupid fun and I beg of you to watch this movie at least one point in your life.The story for this movie is so stupid, so cheesy, so ridiculous that it makes it better than Shawshank. A script can be so bad it's good and this movie proves that. If you watch this movie looking for a dark, gritty, realistic crime thriller then read the quote in the summary and rethink your mindset. It's so dumb and unrealistic but that is what makes it perfect. If I actually cared, the story would be awful but this movie is so fun that you shouldn't care.Nicholas Cage was so cheesy in this movie and his accent is thicker than the 38th parallel. He knew EXACTLY what he was doing in this movie and relished in that fact. John Malkovich was amazing as Cyrus 'The Virus' Grissom and is easily the best part of this movie. Cyrus is such a great villain; he's a pure psychopath and sociopath but has so much charisma that it's genuinely frightening but also amazing. John Cusack was good as Vince Larkin. Steve Buscemi was good as Garland Greene as was Danny Trejo as Johnny 23. Every actor in this movie did a good job and knew exactly what type of movie they were in. Every single inmate has a sickening degree of likability to them and was very memorable.Technically, this movie was awful. The cinematography was awful and the editing was just sad. The effects were awful and the set design consisted of plane.The action in this movie is absolutely absurd and that makes it so much better. It's stupid fun and doesn't work in any way but that is what makes it worse. This movie's primary goal is to provide a mental time and it does that to the nth degree. Honestly, I could vote this movie for having the best dialogue in any movie ever, along with Face/Off and The Wicker Man'(Something convenient there don't think). The line 'PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX' and 'MAKE A MOVE, AND THE BUNNY GETS IT' being two of the greatest lines of dialogue ever written. It's now official that Scott Rosenburg(co-writer of that beloved classic 'Kangaroo Jack') is officially a better writer than Roald Dahl, Steven King, William Shakespeare and J.R Tolkien purely for those two lines.In conclusion, this movie is awful. I mean it is but it is so much stupid fun. I love it. I can name so many flaws with this movie but none of them matter if you take this movie for what it is. If you can do that, then you will enjoy this movie immensely.7/10

I have watched this movie 4 times this year (it is March) and I took two film classes. I got As in both my film classes. Here are the hottest characters: Steve Buscemi, Swamp Thing. Those are my top two, no doubt. I don't understand how anyone could watch this movie and come out with a different opinion. One time I convinced someone that Swamp Thing was hot. At first she did not see it but the power of suggestion is a powerful power indeed.

I recently had the pleasure of listening to Chad Dukes discuss CON AIR on his podcast and it prompted me to get out my own DVD copy and watch it again for the first time in many years and was pleased to discover that it was just as great as the first time I saw it back in the theater in that long ago summer of 1997. But seeing it again made me a little sad, as it is now a stark reminder that the old cliché is very apt in this case: they just don't make them like this anymore.Looking back now, it's clear CON AIR was the high water mark of the Golden Age of the Action Movie, the era that gave us SPEED, THE ROCK, AIR FORCE ONE, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and the first couple of DIE HARD sequels; the kind of films that made Jerry Bruckheimer a fan favorite. These movies were cheerfully over the top in the way good comic books are; filled with great dialog, scenes of mass destruction where every explosion looks like a huge gas tank going up with along with tough guys trying to annihilate each with everything from bullet spewing automatic weapons to wicked looking knives, and if nothing else, their fists. These were movies based on a ridiculous and improbable premise that served as a perfect hook for a easy to please audience yearning for good entertainment. The hook for CON AIR was Nicholas Cage's Cameron Poe, a good man who caught a bad break which landed him in a tight situation where he has to be a hero if he wants to get home to his wife and daughter. Poe, a hero of the Persian Gulf War, accidentally kills a drunken lout in a bar fight and inexplicably ends up in Federal Prison; when he finally wins parole, Poe gets a ride home on a prison flight filled with some of the worst criminals ever put in solitary confinement. Things go south in mid air when John Malkovich's Cyrus Grissom, a brilliant criminal mastermind leads the rest of the very hardened criminal passengers in a successful plan to take over the plane and escape across the border. On the ground, US Marshall, Vince Larkin, played by John Cusack, is desperately trying to find a way to get the plane back, the prisoners recaptured and do so despite the incompetent interference of superiors and co-workers. This sets off a convoluted plot filled with narrow escapes just in time, epic confrontations, ambushes, double crosses, and a showdown on the Vegas strip that is wonderfully over the top as Simon West's script works overtime to top itself.The big pull for CON AIR has always been the violence, which is excellently staged, not only in the fore mentioned Vegas Strip finale, but especially in the middle section of the film when the plane puts down at the isolated desert airport. But every true fan of the film knows that the movie's real strength is the performances, which gives some great actors plenty of scenery to chew and spit out. Cage was at the height of his stardom in the mid 90's, having just won the Oscar for LEAVING LAS VEGAS, and was considered a serious actor at the time; Cameron Poe gave him a great opportunity to use some of his best tricks, starting with an affected Southern accent that is impossible to forget. At first, the laid back Cusack seemed an odd choice for an action blockbuster, but it proved to be a piece of inspired casting as Cusack's distinct style of cool intensity proved to be perfect fit with the overwrought eye rolling of his co stars.By some accounts, Malkovich was less than happy with his villain role and the project itself as a whole, if so, it doesn't show up on the screen; he commits totally to the role of Cyrus the Virus.Then there are the great acting contributions by Ving Rhames, Nick Chinlund, Danny Trejo, Colm Meaney, the young Dave Chappelle, Kevin Gage, M.C. Gainey, Conrad Goode, Ty Granderson, Rachel Ticotin, Mykelti Williamson, and two great character stars: Don Davis and Dabs Greer. But the icing on the cake is still Steve Buscemi as Garland Greene, the detached serial killer who sits back utterly amused at it all; his conversations with Poe are classic bits, as is Greene's unnerving "tea party" with the little girl. How great is it that the worst of the worst seems to be the sanest of the lot and is the only one to actually get away in a great final scene. Yet watching CON AIR now makes me painfully aware of the passage of time, I agree with those who point out that if it came out today, the ridiculous plot twists and over the top action pieces would be picked apart on social media Friday night of opening weekend while Millennials would no doubt be horrified by some of the crude racial epitaphs thrown back and forth by the inmates. In the post 9/11 era, the action movie would become darker and much more serious, Cameron Poe would be replaced by Jason Bourne and a movie about a plane hijacked by criminals would not be considered fun. Even the villains would change, where in the 90's, great bad guys like Cyrus the Virus were cousins of Hannibal Lector, while now they are some variation on a terrorist. Though Nicolas Cage had a great summer in 1997, starring in both CON AIR, and that other action classic, FACE OFF, in the years ahead, a series of bombs and bad role choices along with an increasing tendency to over act would turn him into a punch line.