Apologia (7/6/97)
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Don Simpson having passed from the realm of the merely physical to become pure High Concept, his erstwhile partner Jerry Bruckheimer trudges on alone; nor are the relentless energies that brought us
Top Gun, etc. etc., as yet spent. Last year Bruckheimer brought forth
The Rock, which set a new low for the design of biological weapons; this year he’s begotten
Con Air, in which Nicolas Cage learns what most of us could have told him already, namely, that you should never get on a plane with John Malkovich.
Once on the plane, of course, he can’t get off. — Well, he can get off, but then he has to get back on. — And so on. — And so on. — You get the picture. — In fact you doubtless could have written the picture, though Scott Rosenberg [
Beautiful Girls,
Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead] is given the nominal credit. In a Bruckheimer opus, however, it barely matters who writes or directs: what does matter is the gunfire, the explosions, the low camera angles and monster lighting which amplify the already considerable menace of Malkovich, and the dazzling variety of chases on land and in the air that lead us on to the signature Third Act Whammy, a truly stupendous planecrash on the Strip in Las Vegas. — Mere formula, of course. But then, Elle Macpherson is merely a woman.
Contributing psychos are played by Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo, and [winningly] by Steve Buscemi, who finds love playing Barbies with a sixyearold: expect him in Boulder soon. The assistant hero is depicted by John Cusack, though hardly with the same panache he displayed in
Grosse Pointe Blank. — If Cage and Cusack are now action heroes, incidentally, I don’t know who can’t be turned to the purposes of the genre: I half expect Sir John Gielgud as a Navy Seal before the year is out.
Point of trivia: When Cage and Patricia Arquette first met, she set him a scavenger hunt to gauge the depth of his seriousness. One item he apparently succeeded in retrieving was an autograph from J. D. Salinger. — My admiration for his talents, already considerable, is now boundless. — Question: what would Rosanna require? the skull of Proust?
But lay the deeper issues aside. Believe me, it’s worth the price of admission just to see Malkovich, brandishing a weapon with his best demented sneer, exclaiming “Freeze, or the bunny gets it!” By such moments are the art of the cinema nourished.
Later.
____________Travolta with feathers (6/27/97)
