What would you do if the flight you were on was hijacked by a group of the world’s most dangerous criminal masterminds? But more importantly, “What Would Cage Do?” Thankfully, we don’t have to deal with this hypothetical question for very long (although I do like the idea of a bracelet with the letters, WWCD, to help with daily life decisions).

Since we get the answer to this ‘prisoner’s’ dilemma in the Jerry Bruckheimer produced action film Con Air released in 1997, we know exactly what Cage (and really any of us) would do under those circumstances (which we will unpack, like oversized carry-ons, here shortly.)

As discussed in the last post, Cage has turned the corner in his role-playing from the sunshiney nice guy and lovable loser to the full-blown (and capable) action hero. His gun-toting and villain-defying routine may have started reluctantly with The Rock (or even further back with Fire Birds) but with Con Air, it really begins to blossom in a truly Cage-worthy fashion.

In many ways, this is why I think Con Air is quintessential Cage, and I was really happy revisit it at this point in the current watch queue. I realized it’s also a good barometer for a person’s Cage-tolerance / Cage-appreciation. When I began the WATC(H) I would often get asked the question, “Why Nicolas Cage?” Or, “Haven’t you seen Mandy?” As if there was no good reason to watch the entire filmography of a lovable oddball/genius; or as if a movie like Mandy would preclude any reasonable person from taking on such a challenge.

(And, if you’re wondering the answers to the above questions from me, it is always, “Why wouldn’t I” and “No, I have not. But I can’t wait!”)

In addition, I think a person should not judge Nicolas Cage’s filmography based solely on watching either Mandy or The Family Man (for example) because these two movies (like many of his experiments in form) will skew your opinion and shape it in a certain way. You’ll see the actor (only in isolation) playing roles on the outer extremes and you may think, “Oh, I get this guy’s schtick.” And you’d be 100% wrong.

Nicolas Cage cannot be shaped or molded to your feeble expectations. Perish the thought.

BUT…if you do persist in trying to sum up the man (the myth, the legend) of Nic Cage (a futile attempt but who am I to judge?) by watching ONLY one of his films, I think you should just start with Con Air. Con Air will tell you a lot about Nicolas Cage, and a lot about yourself.

I know that claiming Con Air as the perfect Cage-barometer is probably going to be seen as a hot take (controversy!) and will not be popular on some newsfeeds, but I’ll stand by it and prove my point below with characteristic logic, argumentation, and good old fashioned panache.

What Con Air Is All About

Con Air kicks ass as a movie because there is very little pretension to any aspect of it. If you are reading into or seeking ideals that lend themselves to pretension (topical seriousness, borderline intellectualism, an issues debate about incarceration / the industrial-penal complex, and rehabilitation) you will be profoundly misguided and/or pretty disappointed to find none of that here. This is a shoot-em up popcorn heist-hijacking movie in which there are mostly irredeemable bad guys (i.e. the top-ranked convicts being transported between facilities via airplane “The Jailbird”) and mostly well-meaning good guys (the U.S. marshals and assorted police officers transporting the prisoners, and loved ones awaiting good guy’s release) and a handful of slightly more complex moral characters peppered in as bad guy cops and good guy cons.

And then at the very center of all this good vs. evil dynamic sits the ultimate Outlier himself, Cameron Poe, (played by Cage), an ex-military family man who accidentally kills an assailant threatening his wife and winds up (somehow?) in prison. After serving his time inside, Poe winds up in the wrong place at the wrong time once again by boarding a mostly-prisoner transport flight that falls victim to a hijacking plot by a veritable super team of the worst sort of criminals.

Torn between his own self-preservation (and his loyalty to another paroled prisoner pal whose life’s in danger) and a desire to stop the hijacking, Poe chooses to stay on the plane and use his ingenuity, problem-solving, and military training to play both sides (cops / robbers) in order to survive the ordeal and make it home safely to his awaiting wife and child.

In some ways Con Air plays out like a reverse Dirty Dozen or Seven Samurai. Instead of bringing together a team of unique and specialized individuals to use their combined skills in a defensive plan to hold serve with an aggressive invading (and evil) force, Con Air does the opposite. As Poe sets his sights on a return home, the deck gets stacked in the villains favor with more and more dangerous and volatile characters with their own twisted “specialities” from patricides, to serial killers, rapists, arsonists, and con men–each traveler on Con Air has a pretty long rap sheet of dangerously bad behavior, all of which endanger the plan to the secure return home that Poe envisions for himself. The lone good guy, Cameron Poe, is the first and last line of defense tasked with the responsibility of preventing this plane-full of outlaws from escaping their cell and wreaking havoc on any innocent people within their orbit.

(He does get some outside help from U.S. Marshal Agent Vince Larkin, played by John Cusack, but Poe does most of the heavy lifting.)

I’ve always loved these ensemble “completing a mission” casts (Ocean’s Eleven is another great example of this), especially when even the more “minor” roles are filled with name-recognized actors. Con Air had plenty of those in 1997, and by 2023, even the lesser-known stars are pretty well-known.

Here’s the “bad guy” usual suspects list:

• Cyrus “the Virus” Grissom (played by John Malkovich) is the Lex Luther diabolical mastermind behind the hijacking plan and the man who supposedly has “killed more men than cancer”.

• William “Billy Bedlam” Bedford (played by Nick Chinlund) is a “mass murderer” who when he caught his wife cheating with another man, drove four towns over to kill his wife’s “parents, her sisters, her brothers, even her dog.”

• Nathan “Diamond Dog” Jones (played by Ving Rhames) is the Black Panther-like muscle of the group, the former leader of the “Black Guerillas” who once blew up a meeting of the National Rifle Association. Diamond Dog reluctantly takes his lead from Cyrus, but looks to usurp him, as an inferior white man, at the first opportunity.

• Pinball Parker (played by Dave Chappelle) is the small-time hustler, con man, and arsonist, who triggers the hijacking by creating a distraction, i.e. pulling a balloon holding lighter fluid and a match from his stomach, before proceeding to douse the convict next to him with the liquid and then light him on fire. One of the best lines in the film was Parker’s, “Don’t get all wounded knee on my and shit!” spoken to the Native American he’s just doused in lighter fluid.

• Johnny-23 (played by Danny Trejo) is the serial rapist who has a tattooed heart (23 of them) on his arm for every woman that he was convicted of raping. He makes for a very cringey traveling companion for the captured female police guard Sally Bishop (played by Rachel Ticotin) when things go sideways.

• Garland Greene aka “The Marietta Mangler” (played by Steve Buscemi) is the Hanibal Lechter equivalent, a serial killer delivered in muzzle and straightjacket, who is known for killing more than 30 people “up and down the eastern seaboard” in a way that makes the “Manson family look like the Partridge family”. Garland is as creepy as he is insightful about base human nature and psychology, even while being a psychopath himself.

• Swamp Thing (played by M.C. Gainey, one of the lead Others from Lost) is the wild-eyed pilot the convicts have enlisted to help them attempt their escape (to replace the original pilots they have either ransomed or killed).

Here’s the good guys usual suspects line up:

• Well, I’ve already mentioned Poe, Guard Bishop and Agent Larkin, but there was also Poe’s prison buddy “Baby-O” O’dell, played by Mykelti Williamson (whom you may remember as Bubba from Forrest Gump). Unfortunately, Baby-O is a diabetic and was scheduled to get his insulin shot on the plane, but when shit went sideways his insulin shot got lost in the melee, so he spends most of the rest of the movie sweating, incapacitated and in a lot of obvious discomfort. Spoiler alert: Poor guy survives the diabetic seizure, but not the bullet.

• Agent Duncan Malloy (played by Colm Meaney) is one of the borderline bad good guys. His heart is probably not in the right place and his tactics are mostly to scream about all the things Agent Larkin is doing wrong (even though he sent a DEA agent on the plane with a weapon which was a no-no,) but eventually his bad mojo and crappy decision making catches up with him…sort of…as his fancy sports car is towed behind the Con Air plane as it takes off and is deposited like a piece of crumpled trash on the desert floor.

What Con Air Tells Us About Cagedom

Based on the summary of the characters above, I’m betting you can fill in most of the blanks. Even though the prisoners are secured at departure (via handcuffs or cages) they quickly turn the tables on the police officers, free themselves, gain weapons, and leverage for a tidy escape. All without the U.S. marshals on the ground discovering that the plane is no longer under police control.

At gunpoint, the pilot checks in with the tower (as if nothing has happened) and flies the plane to it original destination Carson City, Nevada, where some prisoners are scheduled to be offloaded while others are scheduled for onboarding. This is all running according to Cyrus ultimate plan and he is hoping for a smooth transition and to bring a few of his team members (especially Swamp Thing) into the fold for his finale.

Poe, who must watch this convict take-over unfold, decides to side with the convicts in order to get O’dell the drugs he needs (or help him off the plane) before he succumbs to his condition. In essence he becomes the mole by gaining Cyrus’s tentative trust while raising the suspicions of many other criminals on the plane (e.g. Billy Bedlam, Diamond Dog). The whole time he is seeming to help the convict cause, he is actually sabotaging. it behind the scenes.

But this is exactly why I think Con Air is the perfect barometer for Cage-appreciation. It’s a movie that seems especially built for Nicolas Cage, even when it wasn’t necessarily intended to be and even when there are so many other bodies vying for camera time. The thing that Cage does best (in my opinion) is make the ridiculous, over-the-top, and abstract seem plausible and oddly more interesting (even when it isn’t all that interesting at face value).

He is the alchemist for any film he is in, taking the raw materials he is given–the straw of a ludicrous script, the fire of an over-expressive technique, the water of a variable cast of characters / roles–and by shear force of charisma/will and black magic, he transforms and solidifies the parts and catalyzes his character into pure gold. It’s a sort of magnetism as well. Even with this cast of actors, all eyes eventually turn back to Cameron Poe–

The audience wants to know what is Cage going to do? What is Cage going to say? How is he going to say it? Will he explode on this situation and turn the tide in his favor? Will he weep and howl and writhe across the floor? Will he kill a guy for touching the fuzzy Bunny doll he bought for his daughter?

In this way Con Air is not necessarily “like” other Nicolas Cage movies, but it’s also not dislike them in any substantial way. If you can track with Con Air (it’s essence and Nicolas Cage’s treatment of it) and you feel yourself being strangely drawn in, you can probably track pretty closely with literally any Nicolas Cage movie. If you find yourself questioning, “Why am I watching this? This could never happen. That guy’s accent is really bad and distracting,” then chances are Cage is not your guy and will never be your guy.

Cage embodies the epitome of the preposterous and the theater of the absurd, and for him that shows up as the sublime whenever he turns on his emotionally potent charms.

For example, when you think about it, Con Air (like Fire Birds ripping off Top Gun) is an airborne riff on Die Hard, but it’s done in a way that somehow seems even more LOL-ridiculous (and engaging) than a group of German terrorists taking on Bruce Willis in their attempt to rob L.A.’s Nakatomi Plaza tower on Christmas Eve. With John McClaine (Willis), we have a New York policeman trying to make amends with his estranged L.A. wife. He gets caught up (wrong place/wrong time) in a terrorist take-over of the building she is working in.

In Con Air, Poe is trying to make it back to his wife after years of absence, when he gets caught up (wrong place/wrong time) in a similar take-over on a plane, by unscrupulous men.

Poe works with his captors as a mole, but sends messages back to his confidante on the outside (Agent Larkin) who trusts that he is “their man on the inside.” McClain talks with Sergeant Al Powell and convinces him that there is a terrorist attack under way–he has to convince him much like Larkin has to convince Agent Malloy and the U.S. marshals.

McClaine wears a wife-beater, Poe wears a wife-beater.

McClaine sends messages written on the bodies of the terrorist he is forced to kill (Now I have a machine gun, ho-ho-ho), Poe sends a message (US Marshal Larkin Landing Learner Airfield as clue to the plane’s destination) to Larkin which he pens onto the body of Pinball Parker before he drops his corpse from the plane onto a busy city street.

I’m not saying there’s a direct correlation between the two movies, that one was a facsimile of the other, but there are enough similarities that (stepping back from it) you have to admire the fact that Cage somehow makes this role and this plot seem original, when in fact, it’s a total rehash. No one would reasonably argue that Con Air is a better movie than the greatest Christmas movie of all time (Die Hard). BUT, the way that Nicolas Cage can elevate an otherwise disastrous movie into the status of “highly watchable” simply with his presence, just shows you how powerful he is as an iconic force of nature/actor.

What Con Air Tells Us About Ourselves (or rather Myself)

Con Air is not a perfect movie. With it’s 58% Tomotameter rating, it’s obviously flawed, and what this tells me about myself is that I like things that are imperfect and not pretentious or self conscious about it (touched up in the right ways.) I appreciate what the public might perceive as blemished, unapproachable, or downright hard to swallow. Sometimes these kinds of movies are exactly the right kind of movies you need to escape an otherwise mundane and highly explained (boring) existence.

Not always and not in all situations, but often.

Do I believe that an actor like John Cusack can pull off playing someone who is employed in the police force, tasked with transporting dangerously escapable and hardened criminals. Not really. Whenever he’d raise his eyebrows in surprise I kept thinking of him as the heartbroken teenager in Better Off Dead and Say Anything. But because I like John Cusack intrinsically, I couldn’t help enjoying seeing him play this role that felt nearly impossible to believe in.

Did I buy Nic’s Alabama accent? Nope, not in the slightest, but it was kind of funny to hear it, and his commitment to it was an admirable and courageous act.

Did Poe’s incarceration make any sense at all since he was as an honored military man defending his wife and himself against three attackers? Wouldn’t a self defense charge come into play and keep him from going to jail (especially as a white guy who was attacked by three white guys)? No sir, the fact that Cage got thrown into prison under that verdict (“With your military skills, you are considered a dangerous weapon”) had no bearing on believability in my book, but I like Cage and I wanted to see how he was going to recover from this cruel twist of fate.

Should Trisha’s Yearwood’s “How Do I Live” (Without You) appear in any Nicolas Cage movie EVER? NO!!! Emphatically and empirically that should never happen? And yet, this too, happens in Con Air! This was decision some director made, for better or worse. And I still found myself humming along and getting washed away in the saccharine sentimentality of Cameron Poe returning to his long-lost wife and child.

All this to say, Con Air is not only a barometer for how you might feel about Nicolas Cage (in totality) and Nicolas Cage movies as a whole, but it is also a barometer for your own “suspension of disbelief” and the tolerance level you can maintain for any work of art. Do I want to keep watching if I can’t believe what I’m seeing? Is Nic Cage enough? (The answer is yes, of course, always.)

Best lines from Con Air

Quoted replies from Poe addressing direct or indirect insinuations he was a redneck.

• “What was I thinking about? Yee-haw! That’s right.”
• “Hey! My momma lives in a trailer. Now put those on. I just saved your life.”
• “Many hands make light work. My daddy taught me that.

“Put the bunny back in the box. I said, PUT THE BUNNY BACK in the box.” Poe struggles with and kills Billy. “Why couldn’t you put the bunny back in the box?”

“Now you’re talking semantics. What if I told you insane was working  50 hours a week in some office somewhere for 50 years, at the end of which they tell you to piss off?” Garland Greene

[Jimmy 23 asks Poe, “You know what I am?”] “Ugly all day.” [Ba-dump-dump.]

“Well, Hooo-ray for the sounds of fuckin’ silence.” [Poe, after the Mexicans put silencers on the gun after he warns them that the noise of firing would bring others.]

“There’s only two men I trust. One of them is me, and the other is not you.”

“What do you think I’m gonna do. I’m gonna save the fuckin’ day.”

“C’mon baby, yo. It’s not exactly mai-tais and Yahtze out here. Let’s do it!”

First for Nicolas Cage character as Cameron Poe

• Kills a guy with a chop to the throat
• Eating Hostess Snoballs
• Learning Spanish
• Making oirgami cranes
• Prisoner number 00102875
• Driving a tractor

Recurrences

• Bad southern accent (see Zandalee)
• Easting Doritos (Multiple)
• Doing handstand pushups in prison (see Amos & Andrew)
• Sporting a mullet (see Zandalee)
• Incarcerated (Multiple)
• In a movie with Apache helicopters (see Fire Birds)
• In a movie with Ving Rhames (see Kiss of Death)
• In a movie with Steve Buscemi playing convict (see Zandalee)
• Coming out of prison to meet the child he hadn’t met yet with a stuffed animal (see Wild At Heart)
• Wearing a wife beater (see Moonstruck) 
• Flying a plane into Las Vegas (see Honeymoon in Vegas)

If you like big movie endings, you’ll love Con Air‘s final moments. After the Jailbird crashes onto the Vegas strip, clipping the neck of the Hard Rock Cafe guitar, Larkin and Poe must hop on motorcycles to chase down Swamp Thing and Cyrus who have escaped the crash in a stolen fire engine.

As Swamp Thing accelerates down the busy Vegas Strip colliding with various objects and low-hanging overpasses, Cyrus attempts to use the engine’s ladder, a long hook, and the firehose itself to expell Poe and Larkin from further pursuit. In the end after some hand to hand combat, Poe is able to jump from the fire engine as it somehow collides with and scatters a giant pile (bag?) of cash all over the street.

Poe stands and walks back up the Strip as bystanders grab for the cash that is now floating all around them. With a sure hand Poe grabs the wet bunny doll that he bought his daughter as a gift (that must have fallen from the plane) before it can float down a gutter.

Meanwhile, Cyrus, who also fell from the fire engine, lands under a random piece of construction equipment that proceeds to crush his head. But although Poe is reunited with his family, justice does not entirely prevail. Garland Green is now out on the loose again and is shown winning at a casino table to the cheers of onlookers.

And this my friends, is a great Nicolas Cage movie, and I’ll leave you with one more of his lines that says it all, “If you talk to my hummingbird again, you tell her I love her. But I couldn’t leave a fallen man behind.” How can he say those words with a straight face? He’s an acting genius. That’s how.

WWCD.