Con Air
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| Con Air | |
|---|---|
 Con Air DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Simon West |
| Produced by | Jerry Bruckheimer |
| Written by | Scott Rosenberg |
| Starring | Nicolas Cage John Cusack John Malkovich |
| Music by | Mark Mancina Trevor Rabin |
| Cinematography | David Tattersall |
| Editing by | Chris Lebenzon Steve Mirkovich Glen Scantlebury |
| Distributed by | Buena Vista Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 6th, 1997 (USA) |
| Running time | 115 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $75,000,000 US (est.) |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Con Air (1997) is an American action/thriller movie by Touchstone Pictures, starring Nicolas Cage, John Cusack and John Malkovich. It is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Simon West. The film is set aboard, and borrows its title from, the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System, an airline used by the government to transport criminals across the country.
The film featured the hit song, "How Do I Live" performed by Trisha Yearwood. The song was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Song and Sound, losing to Titanic in both categories.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
Cameron Poe, a United States Army Ranger who has just finished his tour of service in Operation Desert Storm and has received an honorable discharge, returns home to his pregnant wife, a waitress at a local diner. After an altercation with three belligerent customers, he kills a man in self-defense. He is found guilty of manslaughter and receives a sentence of 7-10 years. He is incarcerated before his daughter is born.
Poe maintains correspondence with his daughter throughout the term of his sentence. During this time, elements of his personality arise that reveal his sense of honor, nobility, and violence as a last resort to resolving conflicts. To pass the time, Poe becomes a heavy reader, learns Spanish and learns how to make paper origami. He also strikes up a close friendship with fellow prisoner Mike "Baby-O" O'Dell. Eventually, he is paroled, on his daughter's seventh birthday, having served seven years in prison.
Poe is scheduled to fly home to Alabama along with an assortment of inmates bound for a new Supermax prison being constructed in his home state. The transfer is overseen by U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin (John Cusack) who is brought in to ensure a safe and efficient transfer of a number of super criminals. These inmates are incarcerated for a variety of extreme offenses, ranging from serial and mass murder to a variety of petty offenses. The guards are overpowered and the plane is summarily hijacked by the more violent inmates, led by ruthless malefactor Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom (John Malkovich) being paid by drug lord and fellow prisoner Francisco Cindino, where they intend to fly to South America and settle into a country that does not maintain an extradition treaty with the United States.
For the duration of the movie Poe remains the anti-hero, thrust into a heroic stance to protect both Baby-O, who suffers from diabetes and needs a now-missing insulin shot, and one of the female guards, who is restrained and of particular interest to "Johnny 23," an infamous serial rapist. On numerous occasions he is responsible for alerting local authorities to the dire situation of the plane and, in one sequence, writing messages to Larkin on the shirt of a dead convict named Pinball, which he drops out of the plane onto the streets of a crowded city. He is successful in concealing his identity until the end of the film, where he actively resists the inmates on the plane and aids Larkin on a ground chase through Las Vegas.
[edit] Cast
convicts
- Nicolas Cage as Cameron Poe, paroled ex-con catching a ride home from San Quentin to Alabama where he will be returned to his family.
- John Malkovich as Cyrus 'The Virus' Grissom, leader of the inmates who has spent 25 of his 39 years in the prison system, has been deemed a "true product of the system."
- Ving Rhames as Nathan 'Diamond Dog' Jones, black militant leader imprisoned for murdering NRA members who helps plot Cyrus' takeover plans.
- Dave Chappelle as Joe 'Pinball' Parker, drug addict inmate who causes disturbance for Grissom, Jones, and Bedford to take over the plane.
- Mykelti Williamson as Mike 'Baby-O' O'Dell, Poe's cellmate who is transferring prisons and remains one of the more decent inmates aboard the plane.
- Nick Chinlund as William 'Billy Bedlam' Bedford, serial killer who murdered his wife's family after catching her in an adulterous moment, along with Grissom and Jones is a "Separate" inmate.
- Steve Buscemi as Garland 'The Marietta Mangler' Greene, a serial killer feared by the other inmates who is imprisoned with high security measures due to his infamous execution style.
- Danny Trejo as Johnny 'Johnny-23' Baca, serial rapist inmate who has 23 counts of rape giving the numeric portion of his nickname.
- M.C. Gainey as Swamp Thing, inmate who is a vet from Vietnam who flies the plane after its takeover.
- Jesse Borrego as Francisco Cindino, inmate who is heir of a Colombian drug cartel family that is financing the escape efforts of Cyrus Grissom
- Renoly Santiago as Ramon 'Sally-Can't Dance' Martinez, effeminate inmate who appears sexually subservient to other inmates.
officials
- John Cusack as U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin, chief U.S. marshall looking to take back "jailbird" plane through help of Cameron Poe.
- Colm Meaney as DEA Agent Duncan Malloy, overzealous DEA Agent looking to shoot down plane after death of fellow DEA Agent.
- Rachel Ticotin as Guard Sally Bishop, female prison guard transporting Poe and O'Dell who remains protected by Poe during inmate takeover of plane.
- Steve Eastin as Guard Falzon, prison guard who is disliking of inmates that is saved by Poe whom he dubs as "trailer trash."
- José Zúñiga as DEA Agent Willie Sims, undercover DEA agent posing as inmate to interrogate Cindino about family drug business, killed during takeover of plane.
others
- Monica Potter as Tricia Poe, Cameron Poe's wife
- Landry Allbright as Casey Poe, Cameron Poe's daughter
[edit] Trivia
- In one scene of the movie when the prisoners believe that they are home free, they play Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" while dancing in celebration. This leads to the memorable quote by Garland Green, played by Steve Buscemi: "Define irony: a bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash."
- The main action of the movie takes place on July 14, Bastille Day.
- This is the second of three consecutive movies featuring Nicolas Cage, all of which are of the action genre, to feature a finale where Cage is flying through the air during an explosion. The movie preceding this one is The Rock and the movie following this one is Face/Off. This one features Cage jumping to avoid the explosion caused by the collision between the firetruck he was riding on and an armored truck filled with money.
- On the DVD commentary of Chappelle's Show, Dave Chappelle states that he improvised most of his lines in this film.
- MaximOnline.com named the airplane crash in Con Air #1 on its list of "Most Horrific Movie Plane Crashes."
[edit] TV/Movie References
- In The New Guy, Dizzy Harrison (D.J. Qualls) arrives at his new school in the same restrictive outfit that Garland Greene wears when he is first loaded on the plane.
- In the movie Dogma, Chris Rock falls from the sky and hits the ground near Jay and Silent Bob. Jay remarks "Do you think he has a message on him like that dude in Con Air?". And immediately Rock responds with "Con air. Con Shit!, God, did that movie suck!" remarking on critics' responses to the film.
[edit] Box office
| US Gross Domestic Takings | US$ 101,117,573 |
| Other International Takings | $122,894,661 |
| Gross Worldwide Takings | $224,012,234 |
[edit] External links
- Boxoffice Information
- Con Air at the Internet Movie Database
- Con Air at Rotten Tomatoes
- "Con Air" Clip Plane crash scene
