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Air traffic control is a profession that might not at first thought make the average person's short list of intriguing professions. At least not in comparison to such vocations as crocodile hunter, hockey referee, and driver for the "Baywatch" lunch truck. But if you consider that, as one of the characters in Pushing Tin says, "controllers are responsible for more lives in one shift than a surgeon is in his entire lifetime," it becomes a calling to take more seriously.
Which, to its credit, Pushing Tin doesn't. Set among the controllers of the Long Island facility handling traffic for Kennedy, Newark, and LaGuardia – "squeezing more planes closer together than anyplace else on earth" -- what is does is visit the carefully maintained insanity in possibly the most high-pressure, nerve-wracking peacetime job since Czar Nicolas decided it might be prudent to hire a food taster. Specifically, it illuminates this milieu by having fun with what could happen if a controller -- lost control.
Nick "The Zone" Falzone (John Cusack) is a rarity among rarities. Gifted with the ability to translate a two-dimensional radar screen into a 3-D video game in his head, he commands the sky in absentia through a stream of rapidfire radio instructions that sound like Euclidean hip-hop. Sucking a rush from the relentless, unforgiving flow of unsuspecting airborne humanity, he's avoided the pitfalls that trip some of the less stressable members of his motley, fuzzy-eyed pack, some of whom break down so frequently they provide regular fodder for office pools. He's even managed to stay married to his first wife, Connie (Elizabeth's Cate Blanchett), when some of his coworkers are approaching matrimonial double digits.
Which isn't to say he doesn't have problems. His on-the-job mentality leads him to expect that cars and waitresses observe the same lockstep precision he enforces in the sky; sleep is "boring;" worst, his obsession with being the best at everything from job performance to shooting hoops at the company barbecue is ripe for cracking. Enter Russell Bell (Billy Bob Thornton), a new guy from Out West who comes to Long Island TRACON with a rumored wild-man rep, a feather in his headset, and a 19-year-old near-alcoholic centerfold wife, Mary (Angelina Jolie). Half Choctaw Indian, he's been molded by skirmishes with life's land mines into the ultimate Zen console jockey. Rather than beat the maelstrom by trying to outrun it, Russell makes the chaos work for him: "I just move the blips around so they don't hit each other, and then I go home." With preternatural calm, and little apparent effort, he quickly, guilelessly, takes over in every way as top dog at Top Gun. Nobody, including Connie, can help but find Russell "interesting." So The Zone can almost be forgiven when, after bumping into a despondent, insecure Mary in the grocery store liquor aisle one evening when Russell is out for another of his frequent unscheduled motorcycle disappearances, he – innocently, really – goes to bed with her.
Things pretty much fall into a death spiral from there, because The Zone has broken the cardinal rule of air traffic: "Only scum would screw around with another controller's wife." His guilt, his envy, and his fear that Russell will retaliate drive him into a paranoia that could end up costing him his marriage as well as his job.
In it's first hour, Pushing Tin is so good it could have been a M*A*S*H for the millennium, finding humanity in different sort of war. Cusack shines in another "disturbed apple pie" (I got that phrase from an early "Happy Days" episode, back before it went live and stupid and was still a rather poignant coming-of-age comedy rather than just another one of ABC's top-rated 70s lobotomies) role, a surprisingly fragile soul for someone so successful in a difficult, non-traditional line of work, like his confused hit man in Grosse Pointe Blank. The script, written by "Taxi" and "Cheers" creators Glen and Les Charles and directed by Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco, Four Weddings and a Funeral), encourages Thornton to give his most complex, understated performance yet, and Angelina Jolie to trot out a Texas accent that adds another layer to her growing appeal. Stir in a great supporting cast playing assorted controllers, including Vicki Lewis ("NewsRadio"), Michael Willis ("Homicide"), and Jake Weber (Meet Joe Black), and you'd think it couldn't lose. But right when you reach the point of thinking, "This is neat; where's it gonna go?" a couple major characters conveniently go away and the plot collides with an easy, unimaginative, overly sentimental climax. More awkward still is Cate Blanchett's suddenly turning very Italian, as if she's been possessed by Talia Shire from the Godfather saga.
Credit Pushing Tin for generally playing tension above suspense, and for keeping its suspense sequences tastefully few and earthbound rather than going for a formulaic aircraft-in-jeopardy routine. It's really too bad that what might have been one of the best movies of the year winds up only being slightly better than most inflight meals. B-
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