StrangeScaffold
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Con Air (1997 film) = Finished
🕑 Added 2018-11-15 04:03:26 +0000 UTC Yes, I could shout for hours about WHY THE HELL THEY LET NICOLAS CAGE HAVE A SOUTHERN ACCENT AND A DRAWL AND A MULLET OH GOODNESS GOSH--but I'll digress.Con Air is refried action thriller sold alongside coffee hot enough to obscure the taste.
Con Air is the exact kind of absurdly obvious melodrama that would claim to be "Based on a True Story" in the trailers before throwing an alien craft into the background of an explosion in the Nevada desert because it would "be cool".
Con Air, in a steaming soup of drawled pseudo-patriotic punchbang base-level improvisation, somehow has one of the most tense sequences I've ever seen in a movie.
Steve Buscemi's mass murdering psychopath, Garland Greene, wanders through a seemingly abandoned compound of trailers in the desert. He comes upon a little girl. They have a tea party as the main group of convicts attempts to refuel and take off to their next destination. She asks him if he's sick. He looks sick, she says. He replies that he is sick. She asks if he's taking medicine, and he replies that he isn't--what he has can't be cured with medicine. The little girl asks if he knows "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", and begins to sing in what can only be described as the lilt of childhood. He begins to chant the words along with her as the camera cuts to his swinging, leering perspective.
"He's got the whooooole wide world / In his hands..."
We zoom in on Buscemi's face...
THIS IS A DIRE SITUATION AND NICOLAS CAGE'S ALL-AMERICAN SLURRING DOES NOTHING TO ABATE OUR GROWING PANIC
Garland Greene staggers away shortly afterward, holding the little girl's doll.
We have witnessed (or rather, not witnessed) something horrific.
As the plane takes off, though - we see the girl! She's okay! Thank God.
In this sequence of events, we can actually see a formula for creating a strong, suspenseful arc, contained within a movie that otherwise does little to merit such reaction.
1. Establish Your Rules
Garland is a damaged serial killer who murders people in brutal ways, regardless of age, color, gender, or creed. A naive little girl invites him to a tea party. She trusts him.
We've got our stage, and the rules of engagement. We know what will happen next, provided no intervening factors arise.
2. Let Events Evolve Logically
The movie plays into our expectations exactly. The situation escalates--again, as expected. We are witnessing a train crash in slow motion, rendered in trickling horror because we are observing the tracks.
3. Halt
Just before we receive narrative satisfaction as to WHAT in the HELL is HAPPENING, Con Air cuts away.
4. Lie Your Ass Off
HE'S HOLDING HER DOLL WHAT IN THE FLYING FUDGE
HE KILLED HER
DID THAT ACTUALLY HAPPEN
THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED
5. Tell The Truth
She's alive! Haha.
I wasn't worried at all.
Really.
The principle I'm describing here is basically subversion--a long con with a trembling string of tension in the middle where more plot would usually be. A space for the mind to fill in all sorts of nasty little crevices about what comes next, until 'next', finally comes. It's great. Very well used here.
Con Air closes, oddly enough, with Garland's face. He's living it up at the craps table, surrounded by adoring members of the opposite sex, because GOD KNOWS *HE* DESERVES A HAPPY ENDING IN VEGAS, RIGHT?
WHAT THE F*CK, CON AIR.
...
Love your work Steve. Big fan.
