Speed 2 Month Day 9: Powered Flight

When SPEED 2 was released that black Friday in June of 1997, it had little to compete with other than a few aging blockbusters and ULEE’S GOLD, which had little to do with action/adventure with a romantic twist. Except, a week prior, one of those was released. Its name was CON AIR and it, like many of these types of movies, has a ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’ fan base.

A brief synopsis of the movie, for those not in the know: Returning vet (an Army Ranger, if that’s important to you) gets arrested after a bar fight, defending his wife. Serves his time, is sent on a transport plane of serial criminals, which they have plotted to take over, so they can fly to freedom. Chaos and heroism ensues as the Ranger does all he can to return to his wife and child. Got it? Good.

CON AIR has a number of things going for it and the first is the cast. Love him or hate him, Nicolas Cage took the lead role and filled it admirably, if not memorably. Honestly, anyone could have fit the role and done it justice; it really isn’t that deep of a character. Broad strokes here, folks. Even so, he’s likable enough to propel the oddball plot. Colm Meaney gets props for playing a complete fool, something usually done by journeyman actors John C. McGinley, John Glover or William Atherton. A complete character study can be done with the list of actors playing the convicts – M.C. Gainey, Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo, Dave Chappelle, Steve Buscemi and creepy-in-a-fun-way John Malkovich. To round it out, the man in the hero’s corner is played by John Cusack, who seems totally out of his element but still gets in the action.

The budget was 75 million dollars, less than half of SPEED 2. It grossed a total of 101 million in the US, which didn’t make it a breakout summer hit. It did total out at over 224 million worldwide, which probably made everyone happy, all told. To compare, if you’ve forgotten the figures, SPEED 2 did 48 million domestically and 164 million worldwide. I’m thinking that Nic Cage probably would’ve been able to fill Jason Patric’s role and pull off another 5 or 6 million in sales, domestically. Still wouldn’t have been able to save the script, the movie or the profit margin, though. CON AIR has done something else that many movies of the 90’s have not been able to avoid: the dreaded sequel. Fans clamor for the director, Simon West, to fulfill their dreams and do a second movie. It has yet to happen, thankfully. He did agree to direct EXPENDABLES 2, so that may have been enough to clear out any interest in doing any other sequel for the man. Or, one would hope.

It’s unlikely CON AIR did anything to push SPEED 2 off the box office chart any quicker than its own inept tale was already doing to itself. In fact, it’s more likely people walked out of SPEED 2 and snuck into another viewing of AUSTIN POWERS, which was likely still basking in glory, six weeks after release. Then again, three weeks later would have Nic Cage in a second summer movie, FACE/OFF. If any action/adventure movie put a bullet in the walking corpse that was SPEED 2, it was this flick. More on that on day 10, as Speed 2 Month continues…