1999 / 124 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Pushing Tin is a great movie that falters a bit near the ending, but it is still a pretty great movie.

As many of you know, I think that John Cusack can do little wrong and he is superb here as Nick Falzone. Nick is the best air traffic controller in New York, and he’d be the first one to tell you. “They’re going to have to start making planes faster to keep me interested” he tells a colleague toward the beginning. He is satisfied with his job, his life, with his station in life. (Even if his kids are little more than props, we see them a grand total of twice in the entire movie).

Then a dark cloud arrives in Nick’s life, in the form of Russell Bell (Billy Bob Thornton), a controller who is possibly even better than Nick. He once stood underneath a plane during takeoff to “see what wake turbulence was like”. Another alpha male in Nick’s pack, needless to say, is not a welcome thing, and soon the two of them are engaged in a pissing contest to determine which is the bigger man (not LITERALLY, of course).

The film does a good job of demonstrating just how dangerous such a contest of masculinity can be. Macho posturing can cost a person many things, including his job, his wife and much of his self esteem. Much of it is very, very funny and quite sharp. Cusack seems to specialize in such sharp, richly observed films about various aspects of the human condition, and this one is absolutely no different. Both Cusack and Thornton do great jobs with their respective roles, particularly when the two men confront one another about a certain marital infidelity. I would not dream of giving this moment away, but it is wonderful and the acting is a joy to watch. The other actors in the film are very accomplished as well. Cate Blanchett does a fine job as a woman trying to keep herself sane in the midst of this madness and Angelina Jolie swaggers in and steals control of every scene she’s in as Thornton’s…. “interesting” wife.

In short, “Pushing Tin” is a sharp, funny take on the damage men do to one another in the name of their masculinity, and definitely worth seeing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 5th, 1999 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.