Con-Air lights up the screen but lacks substance

Frank Masi/Touchstone Pictures Nicholas Cage, starring as the paroled cameron Poe in Con Air, leaps from airplane wreckage aftr ending up on a hijacked plane.

Con-Air landed in movie theaters across the country this weekend-or should I say crashed. Despite knocking that little dinosaur flick out of the top box office spot with a $25.5 million showing, Con-Air viewers will feel like they're doing time, anxious t o be freed from theaters after seeing it.

Con-Air is British director Simon West's feature film debut. He has received numerous accolades for his work in advertising, including a Bronze in Cannes in 1995 for his "Ant" spot for Budweiser.

The film is the first solo effort by action/thriller producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the creative force behind such hits as "Beverly Hills Cop," "Top Gun" and last summer's blockbuster, "The Rock." Bruckheimer is known for his big time productions with intens e action and explosions. Con-Air is no exception to his formula-blood wrenching fight scenes and plenty of fireball mushroom clouds.

Bruckheimer teamed up once again with Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage, who stars as prison parolee Cameron Poe.

Poe is a decorated soldier who has been in jail for 8 years for unintentionally killing a man who was harassing his wife. The day he is to get out of jail - the birthday of his daughter who he has never met - Poe hitches a ride home on a plane with some o f the most dangerous and notorious prisoners in the U.S. penal system.

What Poe doesn't know is that a mid-air skyjacking has been planned by Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom (John Malkovich) and some of the other criminals on the plane.

Cage's character becomes a reluctant hero when his diabetic cellmate Baby O (Mykelti Williamson) is in need of a desperate insulin shot to keep him alive.

It is up to Poe to try to stop the cons in the air while U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin (John Cusack) attempts to avert the takeover from the ground, and keep his superiors from blowing up the plane.

The premise behind Con-Air had potential, but the story lacks consistency. For instance, why would a parolee who was doing time for a manslaughter conviction be traveling on a plane with some of the most crazed criminals in America?

And, in the beginning of the movie, we are told that no one is allowed to have a gun on the plane and that the only gun onboard is in a lock box in the cockpit. However, later in the movie the cons find a full artillery of weapons in the belly of the plan e and have a mini-war with authorities at a deserted air field in California.

Then the cons, who planned to escape to Mexico, somehow end up over Las Vegas for the final crash landing into the Sands Casino on the strip.

This scene was almost entirely done with computers and was very realistic but stupid. It was obviously added to allow a few more gratuitous explosions.

During interviews, the filmmakers have boasted that the characters had real depth and complexity unlike the usual superficial characters that lace action films. But I found the cons to be clich‚ prison stereotypes and predictable.

For example, con Johnny 23 (Danny Trejo), a serial rapist, spent a majority of the movie trying to mount the only female guard on the plane. The only "depth" to the character is that he has a tattoo of a heart for each of his 23 rape convictions. He says, "I'd be Johnny 600 if they knew any better."

Early in the movie, Poe is seen giving Baby O a Snowball cupcake through the jail bars. This simple interaction along with a hug later is supposed to justify to the audience why Poe chooses to miss an opportunity to get off the plane and risk the chance o f never meeting his daughter so he can get Baby O his insulin shot.

The movie has plenty of action, but uses a lot of nauseating quick tight shots, making it hard to follow. Yeah, the huge explosions were cool, but for the most part, they seemed forced into the story. I can just see Bruckheimer on the set, "Hey, we've got 10 minutes of running time with out an explosion, blow something up now!"

Con-Air has several humorous scenes, some unintentional (like Cage's cheesy Southern accent), which make the movie at times entertaining and not totally lame.

If you have low expectations and are just looking for a typical action flick that focuses on exciting special effects rather than a good storyline, you won't be disappointed. The only difference between Lost World and Con-Air is that instead of using din osaurs to lure audiences, it uses explosions. Basically, it's just another gimmick movie with no meat to the story.