I am of the male persuasion. This means that every now and then, I get these urges. Urges to watch a standard bloke film, for example. Lots of things going boom, people fighting, flashy cars, and if at all possible some boobs. As bloke films go, Con Air is a good one.
As my introduction might have told you, Con Air is not a very complicated film. In fact, the story is easily summarised in one sentence. A plane transporting some of the nastiest convicts in America gets hijacked, but one person on board is basically a good guy on his way home, and he secretly tries to sabotage the whole holiday to South America the rest of the plane plans on taking.
The cast is quite good. John Malkovich is chilling as cold-hearted Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom, the main bad guy. Steve Buscemi is a loveable creep, who is apparently the biggest murderer on the plane, but really doesn't do any bad stuff while we see him. John Cusack is hilarious as the sandal-wearing pedantic special agent on the ground trying to track the plane. Nicolas Cage is well-cast as the doggy-eyed big boy scout trying to do the right thing, and as a personal favourite of mine, Danny Trejo does what he does best by being a knife-wielding piece of Mexican scum, although in this particular case he adds rape into the mix as well.
As befits your standard bloke film, there's a fair few humourous moments to be enjoyed in Con Air, generally at someone else's expense. It never reaches the cleverness level of, say, Pulp Fiction, or the laugh-out-loud potential of, say, Snatch, but Con Air is still good entertainment that will fit a night of male bonding involving movies, hamburgers and beer. So why not go watch it?
