“Con Air” was Cage’s second go-round in a Jerry Bruckheimer action extravaganza, and, despite its ludicrous set pieces, the one that called for his most understated performance. Cage’s Cameron Poe is a Gulf War hero who, after serving eight years in prison for killing a man in self-defense (he tried to assault Poe’s pregnant wife), has been paroled, which will allow him to reunite with his wife and see his little girl for the first time. To commemorate the long-anticipated moment, Poe plans to give his daughter a stuffed bunny.
Alas, Poe’s prison transport, which is scheduled to drop off a who’s-who of the country’s most dangerous criminals, gets hijacked by said law-breakers, who plan to fly the plane to a non-extradition country. Poe has no intention of allowing this to happen. He’s going to foil the prisoners’ plan, and, one way or another, get the stuffed bunny to his daughter.
Of course, one of the convicts has to go and threaten the bunny, which prompts Cage to deliver the film’s most inspired line. And it’s hardly surprising to learn the star invented the moment himself.
It’s an interesting contrast in styles. Whereas Cage got to fire up the histrionics as the malevolent Castor Troy in “Face/Off,” “Con Air” offered him the opportunity to portray a laconic hero in the mold of Clint Eastwood. He’s the straight man on a plane stuffed with villains brought to cartoonish life by the formidable likes of John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, and Ving Rhames. And yet Cage still gets the film’s biggest laugh when he orders Nick Chinlund’s mass murderer Billy Bedlam, who’s discovered Poe’s personal effects in the cargo hold of the plane, to “put the bunny back in the box.”