Con Air 1997 is Bayhem! but Rick-Rolled

Blender Dumbass
September 21, 2025

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#conair #nicolascage #simonwest #film #review #movies #cinemastodon

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Producer Jerry Bruckheimer didn't only work with the legendary Michael Bay. He worked with other legends too, like Tony Scott and in the case of Con Air Simon West who directed the Rick Astley music video Never Gonna Give You Up. Yet probably due to it being the first collaboration of Bruckheimer and West ( because it is West's directorial debut when it comes to feature films ), Bruckheimer steered him a bit to copy a style of another director he worked with. Michael Bay.

It is obvious from the movie that it is trying to have the same manic energy Bay just delivered with The Rock. It even has the same crazy motherfucker playing the lead character, Nicolas Cage. There is a shot in the film toward the beginning when Cage's character gets into a fight. And West frames the camera in such a way, that I almost expect the camera to rotate around Cage in a spectacular manner ( a shot that Michael Bay is famous for using in every movie he makes ). Nicolas Cage even does the same exact motion he did for Bay on The Rock a year earlier. But West refuses to move the camera. Such a bummer!

The film is a straight up ensemble piece. We got Cage, we got John Malkovich being very fucking cool actually. We got the Mexican Charles Bronson himself Danny Trejo at the peak of his sexiness. Too bad he is playing a rapist. We've got John Cusack who you wouldn't think is right for the role, but who is very fucking right for the role. We got Marsellus Wallace and Luther from Mission Impossible movies himself, Ving Rhames. We've got Steve Buscemi playing himself. Setting himself up to do the "How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?" meme. We've got "Bubba" from Forrest Gump Mykelti Williamson, here not saying a word about shrimp. We've got Dave Chappelle and Monica Potter. And most importantly, we've got Landry Allbright who, by just being there, becomes the reason both the main character and the audience care about everything.

The action in the movie is rough. It is roughly the same amount of roughness as something like The Rock. It does have the money to blow shit up and crash things. So it doesn't suffer like the first Bad Boys film. So theoretically speaking both Bay and West showed roughly the same potential starting out.

That said, while West has an eye for interesting compositions and cool shots, Bay has a much better eye doing the same thing. Con Air looks cool. There are very cool shots in the film. But any Michael Bay movie looks way fucking cooler. I don't think Simon West is bad at it. He gets really fucking close to Bayhem!. But he just ain't Michael Bay. There is a certain Michael Bayness about Michael Bay that makes Michael Bay Michael Bay. And Simon West is just too much of a Simon West to be Michael Bay.

If you compare say the Rick Astley Never Gonna Give You Up video ( directed by West ) to something like Meat Loaf's Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are music video ( directed by Bay ), you can see how different the directors are when Jerry Bruckheimer doesn't interfere. Yet even though Bay wasn't involved in Con Air it seems like the movie is trying too hard to look like the Meat Loaf's music video ( or more like the movie The Rock ) and too little like the Rick Astley's one. I blame Bruckheimer.

The only thing that West brought to the table is, maybe the silliness, or something. Even though Bay is a director of some silly movies, he usually takes the melodrama stupidly seriously. In this film West seems to not even bother to build tension in some scenes. Like he already knows that the main character will Never Gonna Give You Up, Never Gonna Let You Down, Never Gonna Run Around, and Desert you.

Happy Hacking!!!