This summer, MovieJawn is counting down our 25 favorite action movies of all time! We will be posting a new entry each day! See the whole list so far here.

by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer

Every time I watch Con Air (dir. Simon West, 1997), I feel a profound sense of gratitude for its existence. It's a miracle a movie with a logline this stupid gets made, and for it to be made so well is nothing short of a triumph. For a movie like this to succeed, it needs to harness its own idiocy and reflect it back to the audience with a knowing wink while also delivering on the action bonafides. Con Air ticks every box for pure entertainment. Psychotic action set pieces and explosions? Yes. Wild cast of characters played by the industry's premiere character actors? Check. Nicholas Cage? DING DING DING DING DING. A first time feature director whose biggest claim to fame was directing a Budweiser frogs commercial and this music video whose directorial returns have done nothing but diminish over the past quarter decade? What do YOU think??? 

While it may sound like my tongue is firmly in my cheek with all that, Con Air is unironically one of my favorite action movies of all time. It's a movie whose only ambition is to be a shitload of fun and nothing more. Jerry Bruckheimer gave us the closest thing to pure entertainment we have ever seen. Like fully uncut, Grade A, merriment and revelry. Snakes on a Plane (2006) tried to recreate this movie's batshit sense of wonder via a viral groundswell, and it's a good foil for Con Air. Snakes on a Plane failed because it wanted to be a cult classic. Con Air became a cult classic because it didn't give a shit what anyone thought. It wasn't trying to be the next Die Hard, it was trying to be the first Con Air. 

But also, when I say it wasn't trying to be the next Die Hard, I'm obscuring the fact that this movie is explicitly trying to be Die Hard. If you squint the plot is the same. A good guy is trapped in a confined space with a bunch of  bad guys and has to use his wits and status as a walking weapon to save the day. I mean they both feature messages being sent via writing on a dead guy's shirt! They both have the thing where the good guy is in contact with the one honest cop on the force. They both made action stars out of their leads. Etc, etc. Despite these similarities, Con Air is simply using a tried and true action movie formula as its foundation to build something truly insane. Die Hard works because it has its feet firmly in reality. It's wish fulfillment, sure, but as outlandish as the plot is, it's still within the realm of possibility.

If the events of Con Air unfolded in real time, I think the world might implode. It would be too wild for us to go on living. One of the unsung virtues of Con Air is how unflinching it is with the criminals on board the plane. It's a viper's nest of murderers, rapists, and child killers. John Malkovich as the maniacal Cyrus the Virus delivers one of my favorite action movie performances of all time. It's always fun to watch a serious actor get cast in a decidedly non-serious role, and he absolutely crushes it here. He brings a sense of gravitas to Cyrus, and in a movie detached from reality, he is the only character in the movie with an actual plan. In the intervening years, Malkovich went on to lean into his incredible comedic chops, but Con Air was the first time you got to see his full range.

My personal love for Con Air always manages to surprise me anytime I catch a glimpse of it on some waiting room TV. Even writing this now, I feel like I could unfurl a master’s thesis on the merits of this cinematic triumph. I have a sense that there are a lot of closet Con Air fans out there who appreciate it ironically but know in their heart of hearts that there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.