by Rebecca Mikulin

Created on: April 18, 2009

This is the story of Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage), a caring family man with a beautiful wife and daughter...who has just been paroled after ten years in prison for murder. Cameron has never seen his daughter, his wife was pregnant at the time he was imprisoned for killing a man who harassed her and he didn't want his daughter's first memory of him to be of prison. Now he's on his way home from prison, catching a ride on a new state-of-the-art convict transport airplane that is also hauling a cargo of some of the nastiest criminals in recent history...a serial killer (John Malkovich), a serial rapist (with over twenty brutal rapes, played by real-life ex-con Danny Trejo), a mass murderer of the Hannibal Lecter variety (Steve Buscemi), and a whole slew of other such nasties.

As has to happen with setups such as this in the movies (and thanks mainly to incompetent or disobedient people who didn't respect the danger inherent in this particular group of criminals), the cons successfully hijack the airplane on the way to their drop-off, killing all of the guards, the pilot and co-pilot (there were, incidentally, qualified pilots amongst their number). They don't know Poe is a free man just catching a ride home, because he's had to ride with the cons and be chained just like them so he's treated as one of them, successfully making him the only ally the "good guys" have on that plane.

What ensues is an intense drama with Poe caught in the middle, trying to find a way to get a message to the authorities and convince Sirus "The Virus" (Malkovich) to land the plane without giving away to this insanely suspicious bunch that he might not be on the level. All this while trying to keep his diabetic friend alive without insulin and with a milling pack of murderous criminals ready to dispose of anyone who might jeopardize their plans.

What we have here is the ultimate "macho movie" with lots of explosions, insane and murderous criminals, and more than enough mayhem. If you're an action junky this is definitely the movie for you. It's not very often I have almost nothing bad to say about a film, but this is one of those.

Obviously we have a killer cast (no pun intended ) with many other big names besides the ones listed. I hate to say it, but about the only person I thought didn't fit perfectly into his role was Nicolas Cage, though his slightly wooden performance could have been intentional since his character was, in fact, acting throughout the movie and you can't expect every average

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>