Con Air

Con Air is without a doubt the no.1 action movie on my list. The moment the movie ended, I knew that I just watched a top-notch action movie that any others would hard to match.

I'm a fan of many Bruce Willis', Arnold's and Stallone's movies. I've watched Die Hard, Speed, Air Force One, for I don't know how many times but there's something different about Con Air. First time I saw the trailer, I associated this movie with Van Damme's Universal Soldier or Dolph Lundgren's Joshua Tree. They are all action movies located in desert. Con Air's trailer looks like just another one of those which didn't impress me in the past.

It was a Monday afternoon that after I went home from school, my sister asked if I wanted to watch Con Air in cinema. I was reluctant, but I thought at least spending hours in mall and cinema would be better than spending it at home . So there I was in cinema, expecting a so-so action movie just to kill time.

Con Air started with a fast pace, it described Nicolas Cage as a ranger going home from war and after being situated at a difficult condition, he was sent to jail. The story played during opening credit efficiently tells the background that would propel the story forward. The story is simply about a man trying to go home after being released from jail.

What makes Con Air so great is Nicolas Cage's acting. Movies usually show people going out of jail acting cool as a tough guy, but in Con Air, just look at Cage's scene when he got off the prison bus, he looked above, closed his eyes and absorbing sunshine and fresh air. It was a very short scene but this kind of scenes make this movie different.



The character that Nicolas Cage plays, Cameron Poe, does not need tattoos to show he's tough, does not need a pair of killer-eyes look to look fierce. The character is tough in a subtle way by nature and shows confidence. In a hangar scene in the mid of the film, in mid of chaos that the situation could only get worse, I particularly like a scene when John Cusack asks him "What are you going to do?" Cage replies "I'm going to save the f***ing day". Then he turns around and leave. It was an awesome scene, a simple answer with a great determination.

After the scene in which the airplance landed in Vegas, I thought the movie's over and I prepared to go. Unexpectedly, there are additional minutes that left me totally stunned, minutes that I won't forget for the next 14 years. (at least that's how long it's been since when I write this). It's going to change my lifestyle. What lifestyle?? We'll go into that next.

I was overwhelmed by the motorcycle chasing scene. Cage climbed up the ladder of a firefighter's truck, he dangled on it with one arm... he was hanging with one arm!!! Before the chase is over, Cage jumped onto the road leaving the firefighter's truck explode behind. I was truly in awe.That scene was so powerful that a man sitting in front of me in cinema murmured "ck ck ck".

One of the best action scene ever...

The movie ends with a heartwarming family reunion scene. I felt the emotion of the film. I read on internet that some people actually cried watching this scene (you can google it).

The music of this film is also powerful, it adds the adrenalin to the scenes, the electric guitar tones are so firm and escalating the tension. Great soundtrack that when actually I saw the movie, I enjoyed the music so much.

I left home that afternoon with the scenes still in my head. Now, back to that lifestyle.... the following year, I joined a gym. I actually went to gym when I was in junior high, then stopped after a year. But I went back in 1998, I was 16 years old, a year after Con Air was released. I challenged myself to do the what's so called "pull up" workout in fitness. It means hanging on a bar with two arms then raising your arms to carry your body up, like in the army. I got to do it after joining gym for a few months.

That's when I realized how strong it already affected me. I watched Stallone's movie "Cliffhanger" in 1993, there was many scenes of Stallone doing pull ups with one arm, but those scene never actually inspired me to do one.
Like I said, something's different about Con Air.

This is one of the scenes that challenged me to do pull ups!!