CON AIR (Simon West, 1997)

I just watched Con Air for the first time since 1997. And it was awesome. Non stop super high octane cheese. Within the first 2 minutes, there's a montage of glorious american military honour (there's this great voice over that says, "we thank you, AMERICA thanks you"), a massive super celine dion style power ballad accompanying a slow dance and kiss, and spot of deadly hand to hand combat in the rain. And that's not even mentioning the appearance of Nicholas Cage's awful southern accent...

And it just keeps on like that. There's no chance to get bored when everything moves so fast and everybody hams so hard. I wish all dumb movies were this much fun. There's this hilarious bit where Nicholas Cage's buddy has been shot (early on we see that his best buddy is a black dude so we know he isn't one of those racist southerners) and as he lays there bleeding he says "i'm getting to feel like God doesn't exist". Nicholas Cage replies "i'm gonna show you that God exists...", which he does by promptly beating up and killing a whole bunch of people.

The Villians have really great names too. John Malkovic is Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom. And it has an early appearance by Dave Chappelle! His name is Pinball.

I should be heading into the station to do my show now, but I think I'll stay home and watch The Rock instead. As i remember, in that one Nicholas Cage is some kind of beatles loving record collector desk jockey for a government agency who somehow gets caught up in an exciting action situation involving Sean Connery. On Alcatraz. And Sean Conner says, "Losers give up, Winners go home and fuck the prom queen". Or something like that...