'Con Air' hurtles along uneven route

By Laksmi Pamuntjak Djohan

JAKARTA (JP): Con Air has arrived, flapping its generic steroidal wings loudly, explosively, brutally, and with no holds barred.

It has the same multiple-pyrotechnic MO as Top Gun, Crimson Tide, The Rock -- those slick action extravaganzas delivered in first-class summer packages, starring box-office superstars and brandishing a truckload of moral algorithms, patriotism-inspiring military credo, and pure adrenaline.

Similarly, it is rambunctious, silly, excessive, and is all the more fun because of it. If only Alicia Silverstone hadn't claimed the title Excess Baggage for her upcoming movie.

As usual, forget the director. Simon West is a no-name with only a few TV ads to his credit. The movie's real auteur is Jerry Bruckheimer, the man who is known for never "doing it small", on his first solo outing since the death of his long-time partner Don Simpson. That should sufficiently explain the potboiler premise, the pounding soundtrack, the MTV-like pace.

Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) has just returned from the Gulf War. Trying to defend his pregnant wife, Tricia (Monica Potter) from a few drunken hooligans, he accidentally kills one of them and gets sentenced to 10 years in the slammer.

Eight years later, itching to come back to his family, the new parolee ends up fighting evil as the nation's heavyweight criminals hijack Con Air, the U.S. Marshal's prisoner transport division which is taking them to a new maximum-security prison.

Welcome to the slam-bang, blockbuster season. Cage still retains his shaggy, hangdog charm, but this time, his MO has changed. A Best Actor Oscar is not enough, he wants the action hero crown as well. As he buffs up in those in-jail exercise scenes, he simultaneously placates our wounded intelligence during The Rock ("Why is Sean Connery so fit after so many years in jail?").

But, more importantly, he is a good guy. How can he not be. Not one to forget the Ranger credo of never leaving a friend behind, he stakes his life trying to find a hypodermic needle for his diabetic buddy in the middle of blazing crossfire, and plays bodyguard to the only female in the fray.

He also gets glassy-eyed when he mumbles "Mah hummim'bird" to his wife in an over-the-top Southern accent. So what if the baddies steal his light? To Bruckheimer, conscience is everything.

Never one to shun contemporary mores, Bruckheimer also softens the stock action hero formula with some new age sensibilities. In Poe, machismo is lampooned in favor of family values. "Put the bunny back in the box," he softly warns a convict before unleashing some castigatory bedlam upon him. Bruckheimer also has the foresight to not make Cage the sole hero.

Convict role

As the "we" age replaces the "me" age, Cage merely reprises Connery's noble convict role in The Rock and gives John Cusack (as U.S. marshal Vince Larkin) the honor of being the whiz kid who outsmarts his colleagues and ends up saving the day. Cage will have plenty of opportunities for flying solo anyway when he stars as Superman next year.

Which bring us to John Cusack. Unlikely as he is as a man-of action, his annoying, wise-ass, bookworm creep appeal is valid enough for us to root for him as he tries to prevent the authorities from shooting the plane down. Quoting Dostoyevsky can, of course, make or break him (it is the latter as far as DEA agent Duncan Malloy is concerned) but Cusack's loquacious arrogance, delivered in his trademark dryness, is no attempt at smugness. And not since Henry Czerny and Harrison Ford locked horns in Clear and Present Danger has institutional infighting (between Larkin and Malloy) been so engaging.

Malkovich, as lead hijacker Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom, is in his element, but, considering his acting portfolio of late, that's nothing new. He is the consummate twisted, flat-talking intellectual villain in yet another guise, milking each segment for nearly all the impending sense of danger it's worth.

Well, nearly, because it is pretty easy to stand out in the company of your usual graceless neanderthals. Ving Rhames squanders his potential comic energies as black supremacist Diamond Dog, and does little beyond strutting glistening muscles and dispensing enough gruff that would perhaps last you a lifetime.

Nearly, too, because leading the pack doesn't always mean stealing the limelight. In fact, it is Vanity Fair's indie guy of the year Steve Buscemi who is the real scene-stealer. Known for his bizarre bellhop roles in many a Coen Brothers' offbeat project, his chilly serial killer Garland Greene is definitely the real thing. Making his entrance all strapped up a la Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, he foils every expectation by observing his surroundings quietly with the bemused self- possession of the criminally insane.

And when he doth speaketh, his wit matches his aura. "Define irony: a bunch of idiots dancing in a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash." When he sits before a little girl in the middle of an apocalyptic desert, a creepy appetite cracking through his sadistic mouth, we kind of understand what Cage means by "the (movie's) absurdist black tone". Next to Buscemi, Malkovich's brand of literate insanity seems almost elementary.

The plot is provocatively schizoid, yet the shamelessness with which it is played out makes you wonder whether there is in fact no conscious attempt at parody. It's not just the occasional dark humor and delicious irony. It's also the persistent cheeky triviality that permeates Scott Rosenberg's script. Take the almost joyous way Malkovich seems to relish his role and the curious choice of Las Vegas (again?) as a perpetual Cage-vehicle destination for conclusive mayhem (see Honeymoon in Vegas, Leaving Las Vegas, etc.).

But as the movie slides into its inevitable conclusion with a destruction level hitherto unprecedented -- into the famous Sands Hotel, no less -- and Poe first lays eyes on the daughter he's never seen, it reminds you of what could have been.