“They somehow managed to get every freak and creep in the universe on this one plane, and then somehow managed to let them take it over, and then they somehow managed to stick us right smack in the middle”.

For what strikes you from the off with Con Air is that everyone’s in on the joke. I think it was the original Empire review that compared, for instance, the prison montage at the start to something the Zucker brothers could come up with, and I fully see the point. After all, when the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker spoof machine was at full effectiveness, the trick was to play everything straight. By all means let the circumstances be extraordinary. But never, never let your characters wink at the camera. They have to believe what they’re surrounded by.

Thus, as Nicolas Cage’s hairy Cameron Poe finds himself “becoming that man again” (a rare hint at the character’s darkness), he’s locked up for eight years at the start of Con Air – just as his daughter was about to be born.

But rather than press the montage button, writer Scott Rosenberg and director Simon West do something inspired. They pass time by having Casey and Cameron Poe write letters to each other. They say a film has ten minutes to get your attention. By the time ten minutes was up with Con Air, I was practically writing love letters to it.

Truthfully, I could watch the prison sequence on loop for hours, and never not smile at it. Cage’s drawling delivery is utterly magnetic, but you already know that. Heck, there’s even a little narrative weave that goes in. Poe gets a book on Spanish For Beginners, the next moment he’s speaking the language. He gets one on Origami, and soon he’s making an animal out of paper.