Welcome back to this thing that I wrote from last week where I compare the Indianapolis Colts to a film. This week I will be comparing and contrasting the 1997 Nicolas Cage masterpiece Con Air to the team from Naptown. Surprisingly I am two weeks into this running series and I haven’t used a disaster movie yet, though this is inching closer to that vein and if the Colts lose to the Titans this week I just might have to make my own movie called The World Is Burning and Everyone Is Dead and I Totally Hate Everything That Has Happened This Season to find a film that will fit the theme of the article. This, however, isn’t about a potential loss next week to our AFC South foes from Tennessee. No, no this is about our second straight embarrassing loss to a team that made us look more ridiculous than Clinton Portis’ outfits in a post game interview and how it compares to a movie about a plane full of convicts. If I was a smart person I would’ve chose a movie in the first week that had a sequel that was exactly like the first film (I’m looking at you The Hangover franchise), but I’m not Miss Cleo and I can’t predict the future, okay?
Movie Synopsis
Unfamiliar with the film? Let me explain…or at least try to. Cameron Poe (Cage) is an Army Ranger that goes to jail for severely injuring a group of men that tried to kill his pregnant wife because he was considered a “deadly weapon”. I know. The story’s setup is extremely farcical and takes a lot of just “going with it” to make sense, but the setup is the least batty aspect of the movie because he spends eight (yes, eight) years in jail and is finally being released on good behavior. The catch? He has to, for some reason, fly to a location far away from the prison he is currently in aboard a plane full of various levels of criminals that include a black militant group leader (Ving Rhames) , a serial rapist (Danny Trejo), a man that created mass death with chemical weapons (John Malkovich), a man that eats people and wore his victim’s heads as a hat (Steve Buscemi), one that is a diabetic (Bubba from Forrest Gump), and a pint-sized Latino that likes wearing dresses (some little Latin acting fella).
Obviously this film would be very boring if everything went smoothly and the plane made it to its destination and all the prisoners that were being paroled and the prisoners being moved to a higher security prison all went to the places they were suppose to go. To make the film work there has to be complications, which there are. The plane gets taken over by the convicts, they crash the plane, they fix the plane, they kill some people, they land the plane in the middle of the Las Vegas strip, and they put a bunny in a box. All of this ends with a battle between Leeanne Rhymes and Trisha Yearwood for singing dominance of the same song. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it so that ending might not be entirely accurate, but I do recall why this film was just like week 2 of the NFL season for the Colts.
How it relates to Week 2
Plain and simple, the two correlate because they are both clusterf***s. They are flashy with lots of bells and whistles, but neither is truly good. In fact, they’re quite awful when I take off my love for all things terrible colored glasses (Cubs fan through and through as well). There are a plethora of reasons for why these two correlate even further and let me tell you why.
1997/Nicolas Cage’s Film Career – The film was released in a season that the Colts went an abysmal 3-13. This did however lead to the #1 overall pick when we picked up some scrub named Peyton Manning. Just like the Colts’ eerily similar follow up to disappointment (3-13 1998 season), Nicolas Cage followed Con Air with Face/Off. His career since 2011 (when Andrew Luck was drafted) has been filled with consistent ups and downs just as the Colts have been. Interestingly enough, Cage has a film due out in 2016 called The USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage which seems like too much of a prophecy at a courageous comeback to win the Super Bowl next year to discredit. He also ironically had a film release this season called Pay The Ghost (and no I am not making any of this up), which I can only assume foreshadowed the re-signing of T.Y. “Ghost” Hilton. Hopefully Cage makes a movie within the week titled Andrew Luck Turns It Around, Takes A Minimum Contract At The End of the Season, and Wins MVP Every Year For The Rest of His 60 Year Career. That would be a good movie.
Poe and Baby-O – Cameron Poe and Baby-O (the Jay Cutler like diabetic from earlier) are the so called “good guys” on a flight of evil. Baby-O wants to do right, but isn’t nearly as capable as Poe in doing so. I liken this connection to David Parry and Henry Anderson. These two have been a HUGE bright spot on a rather dim season. They have helped morph what was the laughing stock of defensive lines and made them look pretty damn good. This equates to just not being a psychotic killer because we are use to having such awfulness on the front line that even mediocrity seems heroic. I feel as if Anderson acts as Poe because he is the ultimate good guy and is helping drag another good guy in Parry to a level he wouldn’t be at without the nudging of the better guy on this right.
The Plane – The whole team is just like the plane. It is full of a barrage of cultural mixings and holds good guys and bad guys. It has an inexperienced pilot in Chuck Pagano. He knowns how to fly a plane. The man has flown planes before, but he’s never flown a plane like this. This plane is destined to crash and it is up to everyone to come together and figure out how to fix it as a team. You can’t rely on one person to know how to make a whole plane fly again and if Grigson is suppose to be a plane mechanic he really needs to stop patching the broken parts with more used parts. Even if Frank Gore has been a pretty great, sans fumble, used plane engine.
This team has a lot of issues. There are plenty of parts that aren’t working and there are even more parts that are new that haven’t been taken care of properly. Even with a plane full of great people, there are too many insane convicts there mucking it up for them. Hopefully John Cusak shows up soon and saves this plane from imploding.
