Cate Blanchett as: Connie Falzone
Directed by: Mike Newell
Selected Cast: John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Angelina Jolie, Jake Weber & Matt Ross
Written by: Darcy Frey & Glen Charles
Release Year: 1999
Genre: Comedy / Drama / Romance
MPAA Rating: R

Nick and the other boys working the hotspot of air traffic control in New York are impressed with themselves, to say the least. They thrive on the no-room-for-error, fast-paced job and let it infect their lives. The undisputed king of pushing tin, “The Zone” Falzone, rules his workplace and his wedded life with the same short-attention span that gets planes where they need to be in the nick of time. That is, until Russell Bell, a new transfer with a reputation for recklessness but a record of pure perfection shatters the tensely-held status quo. The game of one-upmanship between the two flies so high as to lead Nick into Russell’s bed with his wife. His sanity slipping just as fast as his hold on #1, Cusack’s controller is thrown out-of-control when Thornton’s wanderer quietly leaves town. Nick must now find a way to regain his sanity and repair his marriage before he breaks down completely.

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On the director Mike Newell
• “Mike is an absolutely fantastic major general. He understands the balance between the comedy and the pathos and he was such a great audience for which to play.”

The director Mike Newell on the cast
• “I’m so devoted to the entire cast. They are a very talented, very odd, very ill-assorted bunch that works perfectly for the film. There is no safe average in the cast and no safe average in the film. You know, you set out to collect this weird platoon of people who are real but who also have to spiral off into this extraordinary kind of comic logic. They all are so wonderfully adept and full of technique and invention that I simply just let them go… I rode them with a very light rein because they were so magnificently inventive.”

• Nick Falzone: “What is it?”
Connie Falzone: “Sit down, Nick. I’ve been explaining to the kids what it means that daddy… won’t be around anymore.”
Nick Falzone: “Hey… hey, hey Connie. Wait a minute, Connie… Connie, do you even want to hear my side of this?”
Connie Falzone: “What’s your side of my father dying…?”

• Filmed in Canada and USA (view all.)

• 2 nominations (view all.)

• Cate starred in the movie Bandits (2001) with Billy Bob Thornton as well.

• Billy Bob Thornton also wrote the script for the film The Gift (2000) in which Cate starred.

• Cate also starred in the movie The Aviator (2004) with Matt Ross.

• Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie first met on the set of this movie. They fell in love and were briefly married.

• Billy Bob Thornton’s character Russell Bell states in the movie that he is half Irish (his father) and half Choctaw Indian (his mother). In real life, Mr. Thornton’s father is of Irish ancestry, while his mother is half Choctaw Indian and half Italian.

• While Nick and Connie are driving to lunch, they drive past a building with a VIA (VIA Rail Canada, yellow letters on blue background) logo on it. VIA does not own any property in New York or New Jersey. The driving scene was shot in Canada.