Con Air, bitches!

What was it about the 1990s? …I can’t quite put my finger on it. The idea of using music video and television commercial aesthetics for feature films was already well underway a decade prior, but by mid ‘90s the style had fully gelled and reached its zenith as a glossy, packaged, trademarked lens through which Hollywood focused its most hyperbolic action blockbusters. Perhaps the largest pie-chart percentage of this belonged to the Jerry Bruckeimer factory – a slick, overproduced movie universe with a color pallet almost entirely in sunset pinks and golds, where every hour was “magic hour”. And while many might attribute JB’s collaborations with Michael Bay as the go-to examples, the crowning jewel of this particular Neverland is the Simon West directed Con Air, arguably the best worst movie ever made. But why, you may ask? Because Con Air is different. It’s special. There is about it an added element that cannot easily be explained, one that elevates the film from stupid action movie to blissfully stupid-or-subversively savant Mangasm poetry. Earlier I used the term hyperbolic but Con Air is almost Superbowlic, in that it knee-jerks all of the gut sentiments of pro-America’s commercialized, playtime culture. I won't even bother you with the plot details. Instead, I've made a random list of 20 things I love about this absurdist romp.    

1. The first opening join-the-army montage, with an unseen Powers Boothe doing voice over.

2. John Cusack as Vince Larkin – a play on the verb “larking” as in “to lark”, which further explains his smartass personality and PC-mined poke at the prison system.

3. Cyrus grabs a medieval spear from somewhere atop a moving fire truck.

4. Bright orange fireball explosions. The kind that only exist in movies.

5. The guitar riffing score by Mark Mancina and Trevor Rabin.

6. Swamp Thing.

7. Two grown men fighting to the death over a stuffed bunny.

8. The fact that Simon West is the same guy who directed the Rick Astley ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ music video.

9. Armored money truck that stalls in the middle of the road, then gets hit by fire truck, explodes and rains money endlessly on downtown Las Vegas. 

10. Uncle Bob's Scenic Tours.

11. The second montage for the opening credits where, in an effort to establish Cameron Poe as the noble hero, the camera pans up to reveal him sitting in his jail cell doing origami. Genius.

12. Referring to Larkin who can't be reached on the radio: “Of course you're having trouble reaching him. He's off saving the rain forest or recycling his sandals or some shit!”      

13. Cameron Poe looking inquisitively at a pair of antlers in his hand.

14. Mass murderer Garland Greene (once wore a little girl’s head as a hat) gets a happy ending playing the craps table.

15. A free-falling Dave Chappelle corpse over Fresno (lands on a car following bird crap).

16. Ultra violence and racial/sexual vulgarities rendered moot by an uncanny feel-good enthusiasm. Rarely has a movie so enjoyed its own company.

17. The Pepsi and Budweiser visual approach. Traditionally, directors design shots accumulative to tell a story, but in Con Air shots are designed to advertise a string of gestures.

18. Cyrus’ totally nonsensical death scene: crashes through a skybridge then through power lines then falls onto a random construction site conveyer belt which rolls him head-first underneath a giant impact hammer; cue Porky Pig – ‘That’s all Folks!’

19. Cage Hair.

   

20. This line: “I'm gonna save the fuckin' day”