Con Air (1997) - Loud, dumb actioner coming in hot

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Fiery action and tough-posing male stars attract attention on this poster for Simon West's Con Air

A sympathetic prisoner (Nicolas Cage (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022))) is going on a prisoner air transport, which almost immediately goes completely wrong. Our hero just wants to get home to his family, but the maniacs around him are making that very hard!

 

Con Air is written by Scott Rosenberg (Air Time (1992, TV movie)) and directed by debuting Simon West (The Expendables 2 (2012)).

One may admire how in a Jerry Bruckheimer production such as this, an entire backstory is explained in a matter of minutes even before the intro credits end, so that the film can then proceed to play out without pause: From then on it is just hung up on a lot of idiotic scenes, stereotypes and general tastelessness. (Among much else, notorious real-life serial killers are in Con Air mere content for tacky one-liners.)

The entire star cast work as so many beams of hardwood squeezed into a wood-chipper here in an insanely dumb movie, which makes manipulative stabs into thin air. 

 

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The Mechanic (2011) - West's dull, flawed action remake 

 

 

Watch a 3-minute clip from the film here

Cost: 75 mil. $

Box office: 224 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 2.98 times its cost)

[Con Air premiered 2 June (Las Vegas) and runs 115 minutes. Shooting took place from July - September 1996 in Utah, Indiana, Las Vegas, Nevada and in Los Angeles, California. The film opened #1 to a 24.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 4 weekends in the top 5 (#2-#3-#5-8X-#4), grossing 101.1 mil. $ (45.1 % of the total gross). It was nominated for 2 Oscars: Best Sound, lost to Titanic, and Best Song (Diane Warren's How Do I Live), lost to My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion, James Horner and Will Jennings from Titanic. It was also nominated for a Grammy. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to 3 notches over this one. West returned with The General's Daughter (1999). Nicolas Cage (Time to Kill (1989)) returned in Face/Off (1997); John Cusack (2012 (2009)) in Chicago Cab (1997); and John Malkovich (RED 2 (2013)) in Cannes Man (1997). Con Air is rotten at 55 % with a 5.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Con Air? 

The Mechanic (2011) - West's dull, flawed action remake

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Jason Statham looks good hanging in a rope on the poster for Simon West's The Mechanic

Arthur Bishop is the title 'mechanic', a hard-skinned assassin. He gets a job of cleaning up after a bloody leak and kills an old ally. Then he trains the man's son.

It is hard to get engaged in Jason Statham's (Death Race (2008)) protagonist character, SPOILER after he kills wheelchair-bound Donald Sutherland (Virus (1999)) in cold blood. T And the casting of Tony Goldwyn (The 6th Day (2000)) as his boss, SPOILER who of course turns out to be the real villain, is too obvious.
Mechanic is a silly action remake of The Mechanic (1972) with Charles Bronson, SPOILER that ends in a similarly silly, explosive finale.
Ben Foster (Six Feet Under (2003-05)) has one good scene in the film, in which he seduces a huge assassin and then fights him - to the death!
But all in all it is very hard to get involved with Mechanic, a slick and dull film. It is written by Richard Wenk (The Equalizer (2014)) and Lewis John Carlino (The Mechanic (1972)) and directed by Simon West (Con Air (1997)), a prolific Hollywood director who has still to make a good film. He currently has three films in development, among them a remake of The Blob (1958) for next year.

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 Watch the trailer for the movie here

Cost: 40 mil. $
Box office: 76.3 mil. $
= Big flop
[Mechanic had an 11.4 mil. $ North-American opening weekend and grossed 29.1 mil. $ there (38 % of the total gross). Despite its flop status, a sequel is in post production, Mechanic: Resurrection (2016), again starring Statham and co-starring Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Alba and Michelle Yeoh.]

What do you think of The Mechanic?

The Expendables 2 (2012) - An over-packed action hot-air balloon

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Explosive poster for Simon West's The Expendables 2

QUICK REVIEW:

The mercenary group of 'expendables' owe money to Church (Bruce Willis (Die Hard (1988)) and therefore take a job, which kills their young sniper.
After this, the plot seems like a rehash of some 80's left-overs; a maniac (Jean-Claude Van Damme (Bloodsport (1988)) with plutonium arrives, and there's also the obligatory revenge.
Unfortunately, this is a bad sequel to the energetic predecessor. The plot is unexciting and old hat. Mickey Rourke has vanished from the group without explanation, and instead we get an uncharismatic Chinese woman (Nan Yu (Beijing Love Story (2014)) and a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator (1984))-Bruce Willis-Chuck Norris (The Delta Force (1986)) interplay, which unfortunately just isn't very cool. They babble post-modernistic-style around old lines and other action movie references, which almost only works to blow even more air into an already floating construction, this rather bizarre gathering of action star veterans.

Front-man Sylvester Stallone (Rocky (1976)) has said that he thinks this film is much better than the first one, which only shows how wrong the person behind movies can often be about their own creations. - Right around now, he is telling folks in Cannes that with Expendables 3, - hitting cinemas everywhere in August, - they really got it right ... Well, we'll see about that.
Simon West (Con Air (1997)) directed The Expendables 2, which was biggest outside of the US, and particularly in China, where it beat The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spiderman with a stunning 54 mil. $ in its first 35 days there.
Trivia about the film includes that a stunt man got killed during its long location shoot in Bulgaria, where the film was also sued and fined for environmental damage in the cave seen in the film, where scores of endangered bats apparently died due to the production.
West's next film will be a Jason Statham-starring movie called Wild Card (2014).

Tasteless? - Oh yes. The Expendables 2 last supper advertising gimmick

Watch the trailer for the film here, which looks a lot more exciting than the actual film is

Watch the teaser currently out for The Expendables 3 here

Budget: 100 mil. $
Box office: 311.9 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of the first two Expendables films?
Are you looking forward to the coming third chapter?