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 year in prison for murder. Cameron has never seen his daughter since 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 murder of the Hannibal Lecter variety (Steve Buscemi) amongst others.

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 and 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 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 be on the level, all 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 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 Joe to be a professional actor. I think this is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in terms of cast chemistry, maybe it’s because they had so many film veterans into this obviously big-budget movie but it really paid off whatever they did.

The special effects are awesome in this film with many explosions both large and small and plenty of action scenes with bloody gunfights. This is one of those movies that once the action gets going (that doesn’t take long, ten or fifteen minutes) it just doesn’t stop for the duration, all the way up to the final flaming battle with just about as much explosive content as all the rest of the movie put together.

An action movie with lots of mayhem? Must not have anything else to it, right? Wrong. Any schlub can make a movie in which people murder and destroy throughout the duration but not so many can tie in a great plot with it. Granted, it’s somewhat easy to guess part of the ending (but not all of it!) just out of a general knowledge of how such movies tend to turn out, but it’s quite a ride getting there.

This is probably one of the most entertaining movies to watch on public television where cuss words are voiced over…you guessed it, a good 1/3 of the dialog ends up blanked out or voiced over. Obviously not a film for the kids this is an excellent movie for a grown-ups night in that will keep you interested and marveling over the effects and acting until the very end.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age