Con Air

Silly perfection! Having just watched this again after twenty-odd years, as it's now available in 4k. My god, Hollywood was great back in the day. This movie is stupid, silly, over-the-top everything, and wholly implausible. But it doesn't matter. It's 100% honest wholesome fun, like an action comic for boys in men's bodies. It's got everything, and everything's like a love letter. I want Criterion to add this to their collection and have some of their film historians create commentary tracks for it. This movie is now in my top ten, and I'll watch at least ten times more. 10/10

This takes forever to get going, but once the plot gets the establishing twenty minutes out of the way, it's actually quite a decent adventure story. Ranger Nicolas Cage ("Poe") gets embroiled in a fatal brawl that lands him in jail. Out on his parole, he gets caught up in a highly sophisticated prison break planned by "Cyrus" (John Malkovich) - intent on hijacking their prison flight and executing a complicated onwards escape plan before the pursuing Colm Meaney ("Agent. Malloy") and an heavily armed squad of soldiers track them down. Luckily for Cage, and the authorities, John Cusack ("Agent Larkin") is on hand to help guide in the Feds as time marches on, and Cage's predicament becomes even more precarious. Malkovich makes for quite a good scheming baddie; there is plenty of action, a little bit of humour, pyrotechnics and the last half hour consists of pretty decent, entertaining, end-to-end stuff. Nothing remotely cerebral, but it's still an enjoyable film that finds a use for a snow plough in the desert! Soundtrack is quite good, too.

Great movie. One of my favorites growing up. Action packed with a great storyline. Great cast too.