The “completely amoral” action movie Alexander Payne hates with a passion
Any time a movie is labelled as ‘amoral’, you can be pretty sure that it’s going to be a good time.
There was a period in the 1970s when British censors seemed to have it in for every novel idea making its way onto celluloid, whether it was the work of giallo master Dario Argento or the harmless comedy of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which these days are hailed as classics, but when a contemporary filmmaker like Alexander Payne calls something amoral, it’s hard to be so dismissive.
Not puritanical nor prone to outbursts of moralistic criticism, Payne is a realist, with films such as Sideways, About Schmidt, and The Holdovers presenting humour and melancholy on a small scale while eliciting big emotions. He tells downbeat, darkly comedic, and tragic stories born in mundane settings, involving characters that are often weak, unlikable, and unremarkable, with occasional flashes of grace, which makes one wonder what could possibly make this director clutch his pearls.
In a conversation with The Talks, Payne was asked whether he gets upset when he sees a bad movie at the cinema, to which he responded, “I remember being upset when I saw the movie Con Air years ago. That was a completely amoral film”.
When pressed for details, he explained that because film has a powerful ability to influence people, it appals him that that power would be used to make money off of violence and to “essentially give the people the Roman circus for ten dollars in a movie theatre”.
There is no question that Con Air is basically just a modern-day equivalent of a death match in the Colosseum, but is it really amoral? For the uninitiated, Simon West’s airborne action flick is set on a plane that contains a veritable Hall of Fame of criminals, including rapists, serial killers, and John Malkovich, making for a crew the stuff of nightmares. You know it’s on another level of depravity when Nicolas Cage is tapped to play the only sane one of the bunch.
The plot involves the hijacking of a prison transport plane and Cage’s valiant attempt to safely land the aircraft and prevent the would-be fugitives from escaping to a different country, resulting in a very loud and hammy display, which is exactly what you’d expect from the synopsis and the actors involved.
It is also deeply unserious, and I mean that as a compliment, standing as cinema as junk food. No one is suggesting that it deserves an Oscar (though it did earn two nominations, somehow), and no one is suggesting that it pushes the boundaries, which is just a stupid, shallow, sugar-rush of a film, like Face/Off and The Rock. Sometimes, you just want to watch Nic Cage thrashing and screaming his way through 115 minutes; add in a carefully styled mullet and a Bruce Willis-inspired tank top, and you’ve really got a hit on your hands.
The primary thing is that the people behind Con Air knew exactly what they were doing. The people onscreen are morally corrupt, but the ones behind the camera are cheerfully committed to the low-brow assignment. Leave the amoral label for the Michael Bays and Brett Ratners of the world, for you can’t fault Con Air for staying in its lane.
