Jailbird – a Con Air Fanedit
by CBB
Jailbird reduces the lame jokes and bad scenes from the original CON AIR to a minimum, making this finally a true action flick.
member ratings: 
(16 votes, average: 8.75 out of 10, rated)
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original film name: Con Air
film studio name: Touchstone
Date Original Film Was Released: 07 JUN 1997
Date Edit Was Released: 14 MAY 2006
Original Runtime: 115 min
New Runtime: 97 min
Amount of time Cut/Added: 18 min cut
Cuts removed/added/extended:
- removed intro letter sequence between Cameron and Tricia/Casey. This was the beginning of what made Con Air embarrassing. It was never working out and enduring a prison timelooking so stylish but lacking emotion. Some people think “Pearl Harbor” was the movie where Jerry Bruckheimer became totally superficial, but it was this one.
- removed the first appearance of Duncan Malloy in his sports car. Yes, movies need bad guys and corrupt DEA agents and stuff, but this scene was a bit over the edge. The sports car is kind of important later on, but only as a running gag. Our edition contains no gags.
- removed the guard examining Pinball and Cameron stepping out the bus. No hero appearances in slow motion, please … and no superficial jokes either (“you smell like someone’s been shitting in your mouth” “he said he loved me” …).
- removed Johnny 600. Over the top.
- removed “Sally” intro. Less jokes, more action.
- removed Pinball talking to the female worker. Less jokes, more action.
- removed Cyrus’ exploding cell. This was completely over the top.
- removed talk between Cameron and Diamond Dog. We love Ving, but he just smiles too much here for the kind of character he is playing.
- removed some Diamond Dogs scenes when he is down in the freight room with Cameron. Too many jokes.
- removed Diamond Dog wearing shades and “Sally” complaining about it. The scene was intended to give Billy Bedlam a reason to enter the freight room, but was unnecessarily funny.
- removed Cameron after killing Billy Bedlam saying: “Why didn’t you put the bunny back in the box?” less jokes, more action, please.
- removed Larkin opening the hatch on Lerner Airfield and dropping down. Over the top.
- removed the other pilot scene as he is running away from the convicts. Unnecessary.
- removed Sally picking a dress. Sally is meant to be funny and/or entertaining. But he is just another stupid gay joke. Not needed here.
- removed Duncan talking in the chopper about Larkin trying to save the rainforest. Asshole over the edge.
- removed another Duncan chopper scene (“you said 10 minutes 10 minutes ago”)
- removed Cameron running in slow motion with flying hair from the explosion. This shot must have been meant for Playgirl magazine.
- removed “Sally” talking to Cyrus about what he can do.
- heavily edited the helicopter chase scene. If army helicopters try to shoot down a plane they will succeed. And if people try to fight with guns out of a plane against choppers, they would not be able to stand, because of heavy vibrations and plane movement. Terrible scene.
- removed Cameron talking to Baby’o: “It is just like God does not exist. Where are you going?” “I am going to show you, God does exist.” This is one time to much being the hero and talking like him. No more please.
- removed “Sally” from being slapped by Cameron.
- removed “Sally” from being arrested.
DVD – Features:
- Language: English, German, Spanish, Russian
- Subtitles: English
- Trailer
- Trailershow
- comparison of 2 scenes before/after editing
- Animated menus
- Scene Selection Menus
- Cover and Disk Art in English, German and Russian
- presented in NTSC 16:9 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen
- ac-3 2 channel sound
Conceptual improvements/advancements of edit over original:
Without the million of funny and so very cool sayings Con Air becomes a true action movie, much more serious, much more focussed on action. Of course it is the same movie as before, but the missing parts make it possible to feel tension and thrill and to be not annoyed by the stupidity all the time. Jailbird is not THE action movie and it is not a movie with subtlety, but it is very entertaining.
Time needed for the edition
planning: 2 weeks
editing: 2 days
sound editing: 1 day
trailer: 1 day
DVD layout and features: 6 days
persons involved: 5
Buy the original DVD and support FANDIT.ORG:
TRAILER (right click save as…)
| IMAGES | ||
| cover art in English, Russian and German by Castor&Troy (download here):
|
Disclaimer: You must own the original movie before acquiring any FanEdited movie. We here at FanEdit.org respect the company’s copyrights, and don’t want to infringe on any company’s rights. Thank you, FE!
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the new files RS for JAILBIRD are up now. Enjoy.
Review by boon23 — December 30, 2007 @ 12:19 am
Thanks boon23, now it extracts everything ok.
Review by emphatic — January 6, 2008 @ 8:22 pm
Love this edit, much much more actiony. I’ve always enjoyed this flick, “Sally” included. But I don’t miss him here. I’d have left a little more of the humor in, in particular, the old timer saying he’s messed himself, just a little bit of levity.
Your edits are always very clean, with no noticeable changes in music or tone. Those there was one very jarring bit where Poe is searching for a syringe where they music changes 3 times very rapidly. I had to make sure that my DVD wasn’t skipping. I guess this was around the time in the chopper scene with the “Over the top asshole” talking about Larkin.
Other than that, another great flick from CBB.
Review by gorbash — July 22, 2008 @ 6:09 am
The edit was good but it couldn’t save the incredibly bad ending.
Review by cafevincent — January 13, 2009 @ 8:10 am
ANOTHER nicholas cage movie i have to watch because all you crazy people like him!?!?
unlike the CBB edit of the rock (which is still very good), i think this edit is spot on. you would think 30 minutes was cut from this movie. the pacing is greatly sped up (which is a HUGE improvement) and the cringing/horrible acting moments are left to a minimum. definitely an action cut worth seeing.
technical quality is 5/5
fanediting creativity is 5/5
entertainment is (surprisingly for me…) 3.99/5
4/5
Review by joebshmoe — February 13, 2009 @ 8:01 pm
Funny, I haven’t seen Con Air since it was released, and I was a little surprised while watching Jailbird this morning just how bad the movie is.
Maybe that’s not fair. I guess it wasn’t horrible. Just seems like I remembered a more enjoyable film. I suppose I can tell by my reaction that it is no longer the 90s and I am no longer a teenager.
Still Jailbird is a good step towards improvement and watchability. If I knew someone planning to re-watch Con Air I’m sure I would give them a copy of this instead. The edits were seamless for me, and the editing choices were overall good ones. If it were me, I would probably try and remove more, perhaps cut more of the asshole DEA agent. But then again, it is easy to start cutting bad dialogue, and accidentally end up with nothing left that resembles a movie. I can’t say whether removing anything else would have actually ended up harming the pacing.
The DVD menus are beautiful, although they had a few annoyances for me. When I went to look at what special features were missing, I was frustrated to see there was no button to go back to the main menu. So I clicked on “root menu” (using WinDVD), and it brought me back to the transition scene between the main menu and the special features. I had to press “title menu” instead, although of course I had to re-watch the intro to the main menu (maybe that’s unavoidable, I still don’t know much about making complicated motion menus). Later I was watching the scene comparisons, and pressed the next chapter button thinking it would lead me back to the special features menu, but it brought me to the trailer reel instead (which is fine, since that was what I wanted to select next). At the end of the trailers it looped back to the first trailer though. As I said, these are obviously very minor quibbles.
All in all I feel it’s a strong 7 stars for me. I can’t give much higher, because Con Air just isn’t that enjoyable for me, but I give kudos for making it watchable, which I still think is kind of amazing.
Review by CasmirRadon — October 29, 2009 @ 8:34 pm