Con Air

wittily sadistic prison escape caper that works because John Malkovich, Nicholas Cage and Steve Buscemi have campy fun. Cage is Cameron Poe, an unfairly imprisoned inmate (and former Army Ranger) who yearns to return to his loving wife. First, however, a prison transport flight is hijacked by the “really bad guys,” led by Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom, Nathan “Diamond Dog” Jones (Ving Rhames), and rapist Johnny 23 (Danny Trejo). Buscemi is Garland “The Marietta Mangler” Greene, an irrepressibly snappy serial killer who calls himself “a national treasure.” Director Simon West’s film is a 1990s Spaghetti Western that couldn’t care less about redeeming itself because it draws a thick line between reality and loony burlesque. Read the names and nicknames: Poe, Cyrus the Virus… and so on. Sanctimonious critics wailed about all the violence. A few years later they just loved Iraq.