“Why couldn't you put the bunny back in the box?”

Right, so I was a bit harsh on Face/Off for being too dumb to take seriously and too serious to take dumbly. Clearly this calls for something extra ridiculous to fix things while still being a Nicolas Cage movie. Something like 1997’s Con Air.

Story
Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) is a former Army Ranger who went to prison for killing a drunken redneck outside of a bar. But that’s the backstory. Flash forward a few years and he’s done his time and just needs to get to a parole hearing for good behavior so he can get back to his wife (Monica Potter) and the seven year old daughter he hasn’t met yet. As such, he’s a passenger on a prisoner transport plane that also happens to be transporting some of the nastiest, meanest, most vicious criminals around. Let’s have U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin (John Cusak) and DEA Agent Duncan Malloy (Colm Meany) introduce them: (WARNING: Potty Words)


Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom (John Malkovich), Nathan “Diamond Dog” Jones (Ving Rhames), William “Billy Bedlam” Bedford (Nick Chinlund), Joe “Pinball” Parker (Dave Chappelle), Johnny “Johnny-23” Baca (Danny Trejo) are the major players and this being an action movie, OF COURSE Grissom organizes a takeover of the plane. Also on the flight is Garland “The Marietta Mangler” Greene (Steve Buscemi) who’s an extra creepy child killer who just kind of keeps to himself except for when he says something disturbing in that way that only Buscemi can say. He creeps out the other convicts.

So when things go bad, it falls to Poe (and his mane of prison hair) and Larkin to figure out what’s going on and how to stop these violent criminals from escaping and causing even more chaos and destruction.

Somewhere along the way a Corvette gets towed through the air by a cargo plane and the finale involves Las Vegas and a fire truck. It’s THAT kind of movie.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Simon West, the movie doesn’t really do anything particularly outside-the-box when it comes to 90’s action movies. Still, it knows it’s a goofy action movie and aside from the action set pieces that litter it, there’s a fair number of self-aware goofy touches, like the famous “bunny scene” and the part where one of the convicts’ corpses falls out of a wheel well and lands on small-town America. It’s these kinds of absurd, black comedy touches that give the movie it’s identity.

Writing
Written by Scott Rosenberg, the script takes a premise which is essentially “Die Hard on a Plane” and runs with it. Dialogue is snappy and frequently witty and while there’s not a whole lot innovative here, it does its job of entertaining the audience quite well.

Sound
Original music by Mark Mancina and Trevor Rabin. Orchestral touches married to electric guitars mean that the soundtrack is anything but subtle. Fairly standard for 90’s action films. There’s also “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd (and Garland Greene readily points out the irony of it) and “How Do I Live” by Trisha Yearwood which is kind of the ending/love theme.

Conclusion
I’m not going to defend Con Air as high art. It’s not. It’s a goofy 90’s Nic Cage action vehicle and for what it is, it’s good cheesy fun, and that is something I CAN defend.

“Go ahead! Eat the writer! That will leave you explaining how your character gets to Bremen!”

And here you were thinking we were done with vampires for a while. NOT A CHANCE! 2000 brought Shadow of the Vampire an interesting mock-biopic (Bio-mock? Mockuography?) of F.W. Murnau and the making of Nosferatu, where the conceit is that Max Schreck’s performance was so convincing because he actually was a vampire, and was feeding on the cast and crew through the production of the movie. Strange premise? Sure. Interesting result? You betcha.

Plot
After an atmospheric, Art Nouveau-style opening credits that feel like they drag on for ten minutes, we get to that swingin’ hotbed of zany lasciviousness of the early 1920s; Germany. Well, the film scene was lascivious at least. There, big shot auteur F.W. Murnau assembles his cast & crew to film an adaptation of Dracula, except that they haven’t secured the rights, so they’ve got to change the name for legal protection. Murnau then takes his crew to Eastern Europe for location scenes and finally introduces them to the star of the picture, “method actor” Max Shreck, who is going to remain in-character for the duration of the shoot. This will be easy, since he really is a vampire. Things go well at first, but, well, vampire on the set means people start getting eaten. What follows is an interesting mix of period drama, hilarity, pathos, and a disturbing look at just how far someone is willing to go to capture art on film.

Characters
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau: John Malkovich plays F.W. Murnau as a dictatorial, ego-driven director whose concern with capturing “art” on film supersedes the well-being of his fellow human beings on his crew. At first this gets played for dark laughs as we see his complete disregard for what the vampire is doing to some of his crew, but his obsessions (and drug use) deteriorate the world around him and leads the movie into some pretty disturbing territory by the end.

Albin Grau: Udo Kier plays the producer of the film, the guy paying for the project and ostensibly in charge, but he ends up being second fiddle to Murnau’s vision.

Greta Shroeder: Catherine McCormack plays the diva-like actress who is Murnau’s star. A temperamental party girl with a drug problem, Murnau uses her as an unwitting bargaining chip to keep Shreck from flipping out and murdering everyone.

Fritz Wagner: Cary Elwes plays a cameraman who comes on to replace camera man Wolfgang Mueller (Ronan Vibert) after the latter turned into a vampire’s sippy cup. Fritz is a boozing, partying, womanizing pilot who storms onto the set and is basically awesome, but he’s a late addition to the filming of Nosferatu and doesn’t really do a whole lot.

Gustav von Wangenheim: Eddie Izzard plays the lead actor of Nosferatu, and while he doesn’t really get a whole lot of development, he does show up in a lot of the “Movie-within-a-movie” stuff where shots from the silent film are recreated. For what it is, Izzard gives a great performance, and his reaction to Shreck’s first appearance is priceless.

Max Shreck: Willem Dafoe as an ancient vampire-playing-a-method-actor-playing-a-vampire is the reason to watch this. The makeup work is excellent and makes it difficult to recognize Dafoe’s face, and he turns in an incredibly nuanced performance as he shifts between a pathetic old geezer of a vampire to a murderous monster that preys on the helpless, and he makes both believable. Some of the greatest moments in the film are where he is just talking, like when he’s telling the producer and scriptwriter his reaction to reading Dracula. An incredibly badass performance.

Visuals/Effects
E. Elias Merhige goes for a very moody and shadowy look for the period at most times, which is appropriate, this being a horror movie, more or less. However, where the movie is probably at its best is when its recreating shots from the original Nosferatu. Those are filmed in that same kind of grainy black and white and blend a self-aware hilarity as well as respectful homage to the silent film genre.

Writing
The script by Steven Katz is one hell of an interesting story. Now, this is about as far removed from biography as you can get (Shreck wasn’t a vampire and most of the crew didn’t die during the production), but that’s not the point. It’s a really interesting character drama that by the end of the film asks you who the real soulless monster is, the decrepit vampire or the director that brought him in.

Sound
The score by Dan Jones is appropriately moody and fit’s the period. It blends well into the picture as a whole.

Conclusion
Shadow of the Vampire is an unusual film that probably isn’t for everybody because in the end, its not really a comedy or a horror movie in broad terms. It’s a character drama that, like most films about making films, is ultimately about the human reasons for and the cost of pursuing an artistic vision. At times it probably does get a little too clever for its own good, but ultimately it’s a fascinating, original picture with a good indie film vibe to it, and worth checking out.