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80Yes, disbelief is required not so much to be suspended as removed altogether, but it barely matters as this is an adrenaline blast of the highest order.
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80Con Air, a summer blast of a movie, teaches us many things: Producer Jerry Bruckheimer never met an explosion, a car crash or 20 tough guys talking trash he didn't like. Nicolas Cage is one of our most enjoyable screen heroes. As long as you're funny, you can literally get away with murder in a movie.
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80Preposterous, predictable, but excessively entertaining, this frenzied thriller draws both story and characters from such action classics as "The Fugitive," "Die Hard," "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Silence of the Lambs."
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80Director Simon West hits just the right note between self-conscious silliness and real dramatic intensity in this 1997 action thriller, which uses typecast actors to make the characters' one-liners and predictable behavior resonate.
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75This is a movie that knows it is absurd, and does little to deny it.
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70Numbing but not boring, it's finally more dispiriting than exhilarating, like a wild night of debauchery that leaves only a fearsome hangover for a souvenir.
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70The colorfully written Con Air is a solid chip off "The Rock," pumped up and very well cast, with the prettiness and polish of advertising art.
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70Apart from not knowing to quit while it's ahead, Con Air provides quite an exciting flight prior to its crash and burn.
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60This is a big, silly film. Is it full of explosions and one-liners? Of course. Is it entertaining? Of course.
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60How's the movie? Big, loud, brutal and stupid, that's how it is. But then, you don't need a critic to tell you that -- anyone with a grade-school education who's seen the previews can figure that out.
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60Con Air is entertaining in an extravagantly decadent sort of way. It just isn't a movie.
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50From scene to scene, the tone shifts from supposed sincerity to arch and amused, until the picture begins to seem like some mad, desperate, scattershot attempt to hold an audience's attention from moment to moment, by any means.
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50Director Simon West makes an impressive feature debut in this relentless action-comedy that is, more than anything else, about how funny it is to see hundreds of people exploded, shot, knifed, propellered and burnt to death, and how to land a plane on the crowded Vegas strip.
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50This movie is a perfect example of what's wrong with many big-budget films today: no characters, no intelligence, and, worst of all, little fun.
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50Mega-budget action extravaganzas don't get much sillier than this.
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50It's so shameless, so psychotically nervous about keeping you ''thrilled,'' that the phrase over the top won't do it justice. It's like a drug designed for people who've done every drug and now want to be jet-propelled into numbness.
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50The saving grace of Con Air is its sense of its own absurdity.
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40There's nary a hint of suspense in West's film, though, mainly because he loudly trumpets the upcoming disasters so early in the film.
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38Con Air has all the signs of a hit. That's depressing.
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25Nicolas Cage, Ving Rhames, and Steve Buscemi are among the few performers who emerge with a shred of dignity at the end.
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20While tyro director Simon West fills Con Air with all the slam-bang action and well-honed wisecracks that were the more positive qualities of its predecessors, the film brims even more with all their worst qualities.
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20Con Air is boring to the marrow.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 13
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Mixed: 3 out of 13
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Negative: 0 out of 13
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"Con Air" is your average blow-up blockbuster movie with nothing memorable but massive cliches and decent acting.