Con Air

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Con Air

Con Air DVD cover
Directed by Simon West
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer
Written by Scott Rosenberg
Starring Nicolas Cage
John Cusack
John Malkovich
Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures
Release date(s) June 6th, 1997 (USA)
Running time 115 min.
Language English
Budget $75,000,000 US (est.)
IMDb profile
For other uses, see Conair.
"Cyrus The Virus" redirects here. For the professional wrestler who used this name, see Don Callis.

Con Air (1997) is an American action/thriller movie by Touchstone Pictures, starring Nicolas Cage, John Cusack and John Malkovich. It is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Simon West. The film is set aboard, and borrows its title from, the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System, an airline used by the government to transport criminals across the country.

The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Song and Sound, losing to Titanic in both categories.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The initial scene shows Cameron Poe (Cage), a U.S. Army Ranger who has just been honorably discharged, killing a man to defend his pregnant wife. He pleads guilty to manslaughter charges, but the judge gives him the maximum sentence of 7-10 years anyway due to his combat training making him a "lethal weapon." He is incarcerated before his daughter is born.

The opening credits involve his correspondence with his wife and daughter over the next seven years, with brief snippets of his life in prison (including a riot, in which he does not participate) and his friendship with fellow prisoner and eventual bunkmate, Mike "Baby-O" O'Dell.

The bulk of the movie is set seven years later, when he is about to be paroled (on his daughter's seventh birthday). He is put on a flight with inmates being transferred to a new Supermax prison being built in his native Alabama. The plane is hijacked by the ruthless malefactor Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom (Malkovich) and several other prisoners, on the payroll of drug lord and fellow transfer prisoner Francisco Cindino. The rest of the story involves U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin (Cusack) trying to get the plane back in one piece and the prisoners back in prison; Poe trying to stay alive and aid Larkin, while saving the guards of the plane and the diabetic Baby-O; other law enforcement officers trying to shoot the plane down; and Cyrus the Virus trying to get the plane to its rendezvous point so that he and the other hijackers can get to South America and non-extradition territory.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Cast

convicts

officials

others

[edit] Trivia

  • In one scene of the movie when the prisoners believe that they are home free, they play Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" while dancing in celebration. This leads to the memorable quote by Garland Green, played by Steve Buscemi: "Define irony: a bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash."
  • The main action of the movie takes place on July 14th, Bastille day.

[edit] TV/Movie References

  • In The New Guy, Dizzy Harrison (D.J. Qualls) arrives at his new school in the same restrictive outfit that Garland Green wears when he is first loaded on the plane.
  • In the movie Dogma, Chris Rock falls from the sky and hits the ground near Jay and Silent Bob. Jay remarks "Do you think he has a message on him like that dude in Con Air?". And immediately Rock responds with "Con air. Con Shit!, God, did that movie suck!" remarking on the poor response to the film.

[edit] Box office

US Gross Domestic Takings US$ 101,117,573
Other International Takings $122,894,661
Gross Worldwide Takings $224,012,234

[edit] External links

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