HA! What a cool little movie! PUSHING TIN is the story of what happens when a hot-shot air-traffic controller, who thinks he is the greatest to ever make one of the most difficult jobs in the universe look easy, meets his match when a new hot-shot comes in and makes him look stupid and silly at every turn.

Pushing Tin features John Cusak, a man who I have always considered a comic genius. Cusak could sit and read the dictionary and I would laugh out loud at the way he delivers lines. Cusak is the king controller, cooler than cool, always in a zone, and living life on the edge as only an air traffic controller can.

That is, until Billy Bob Thorton shows up.

Billy Bob is quiet and reserved, and shows up Cusak at every turn. He never even breaks a sweat. Just when Cusak thinks he has bested Thorton, Thorton makes him look like a simp once again. It's hilarious to watch unfold, and Cusak tends to unravel as the movie goes on.

"Fasten seat belts...... HOTTIE ALERT!!!"

Angelina Jolie (who is HOT with a capital sizzle) plays Thorton's wife who causes mucho trouble-o in Cusaks' already headed for disaster life. Also featured is Vicki Lewis from "Newsradio", who plays a body-building fellow air-traffic controller. While Lewis isn't the hottest babe to ever come down the pike, she has been working out BIG TIME and is totally buff. You will find your eyes drawn to her whenever she is in a scene, and there is nothing wrong with that.

This movie was hilarious. It's very dry humor in parts, and what makes it funny is that it's not just a series of clever lines. The humor comes in the events of the movie and how the relate to other events. Thorton will do something in his cool, dry manner, and it's hilarious because we know what Cusak's reaction will be, long before we see it.

One thing about PUSHING TIN, after you see this "rag tag bunch of misfits" (now THERE is a movie cliche' if there ever was one) and see how close they "stack" planes to each other over airports, you probably won't ever want to fly again.

At least not sober.

"Final approach........."

I give Pushing Tin three appendages WAY up. Two outer ones for the chemistry between Thorton and Cusak, and the middle one for "weird, but blisteringly HOT" Angelina Jolie, and the "Ripley-like ripples" of Vicki Lewis.

The balcony is condemned, yada yada yada.