The Nicolas Cage Roulette Challenge, Part 3

It’s been a while since my last entry in the N.C.R. Challenge for a reason. The first two films that came up, luckily, were the kind of goofy thrillers that Nicolas Cage is best known for: Seeking Justice and Trespass. So I was a little gobsmacked when I hit the wheel and this was what came up:

Oh.  Well then.

It took some time to get to the right place where I could watch the film, but I play by my own rules, so there's no skipping allowed.  Needless to say, it doesn't quite fit the profile for the N.C.R. Challenge.  It doesn't represent the Nicolas Cage of Face/Off and National Treasure, but a more serious Cage in a more serious film.

World Trade Center is not a particularly insightful film. It doesn’t say anything new about the attacks of September 11, 2001, nor does it intend to. It might seem odd that Oliver Stone would direct a staunchly apolitical film about one of the most politically inflammatory events in history, but it’s not out of character for him. He’s made films before that reduce a politically polarizing topic to emotional simplicity. Platoon: war is hell. Born on the Fourth of July: soldiers ought not to be punished for fighting an unjust war. He caught some flak for W, a film which didn’t back away from taking a political side but dared to portray the maligned President as a flawed human being rather than as a cartoon.

Like those films, World Trade Center is earnest from beginning to end. It’s a reverent tribute to those who, without a second thought, put themselves into danger on that Tuesday morning to rescue others. It doesn’t see the reasons for the attack or the destructive decisions that would result from it—it doesn’t even see the planes hit—rather, it only sees the men and women who were on the ground that day. They don’t have time to think about the big questions, and neither does the film.

It’s an easy route to take, but we never get the sense that Stone is merely mining the event for an emotional response. He’s respectful and honest, and his movie is genuine rather than maudlin.

It helps that the performances are measured and intricate, never rising to the histrionic levels that must have been tempting. Cage and Michael Peña, as two Port Authority police officers trapped in the rubble, are excellent anchors for the events of the film, and the scenes between them have a quiet resonance of love, loss and desperation. As the people above ground, Maria Bello, Donna Murphy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Frank Whaley, and Viola Davis are believable faces of heartbreak, hope, and determination.

Stone admittedly does go overboard at times. A scene in which Peña has a vision of Christ is a little ridiculous. And it’s a rare movie in which Michael Shannon is the weak link, but his character of Marine Staff Sgt. Dave Karnes, a key figure in the rescue effort, is portrayed as too much of a superhero.

While World Trade Center is limited in its point of view of the attacks of 9/11, it tells a clear key side of the story that’s easy to tell, but needs to be told. It isn’t in line with the best 9/11 films that have been made: it’s not as bold as Paul Greengrass’s United 93, which was just as reverent but quietly political as well, nor is it as complex as Danny Leiner’s The Great New Wonderful, which portrayed a New York City still trembling in the aftermath. But unlike the worst (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), it also carefully avoids sentiment and mawkishness. It boils the day down to this simplicity: when people were running out, good people ran in.

*** out of ****

The Nicolas Cage Roulette Challenge, Part 2: TRESPASS (2011)

I suppose it was a coincidence that the first two Nicolas Cage movies to come up for Nicolas Cage roulette are thrillers of the caliber that usually go straight to video, but somehow have above-average production values, a veteran director, and an A-list cast.  Here is Trespass, starring Cage and Nicole Kidman, both of whom have won Oscars.  The director is Joel Schumacher: not the most beloved, especially among comic book fans, but still the man behind some truly memorable films (The Lost Boys, Flatliners, The Client).  The producer is Irwin Winkler, who produced Goodfellas, Raging Bull, and Rocky.  The cinematographer is Andrzej Bartkowiak, who shot Speed, The Verdict, and Terms of Endearment, and as a director has delivered a few fun actioners like Doom.

And now they have all collaborated as a supergroup on Trespass, with one of the dumbest screenplays ever deemed worthy of shooting.  It's a plain old home invasion thriller that aims to mine its suspense from the leverage chess game between the invaders and the hostages, kind of like The Desperate Hours.  But there are no stakes involved, no characters to care about, no reason to be invested in the family taken hostage or in the hostage takers, and no believable reason that the hostage situation should last more than ten minutes.

The movie's most believable moments come at the beginning, before the crisis begins.  Our first image is of Kyle Miller (Cage), a diamond dealer, fast-talking his way through a sale as he arrives at his palatial new home.  His wife Sarah (Kidman) is bickering with their daughter Avery (Liana Liberato) about the young girl going to a party.  The early family scenes are formulaic but genuine, thanks to three good actors.

Then four burglars show up and take the family hostage.  They all wear tattered ski masks.  One of them speaks more than the rest, and appears to be in charge.  In the mask he looks like Gary Oldman, but when he takes it off we realize he is in fact Ben Mendelsohn.  Another one represents the brawn of the group, and is very quick to resort to violence so that we know he's going to be the amoral one.  In the mask I could have sworn he was played by Will Patton, but it turns out he's Dash Mihok.  The third, good-looking and bland, is instantly recognizable as Cam Gigandet, who's been good-looking and bland for years in such films as Twilight and Priest.  The female burglar (Jordana Spiro) is a hot-tempered and reckless drug addict.

Naturally, the robbery doesn't go as planned, partially because Kyle has something up his sleeves, partially because all the burglars are inept enough to shame the Lavender Hill Mob.  They point their guns at Kyle's and Sarah's heads without firing so many times that I was wondering if the guns fired at all, or if they were poor lonely souls stuck in a Sartrean hell where they have guns but can never muster up the will to pull the trigger.  As the movie progresses they feel less like hostage takers and more like parents threatening their misbehaving children with a count to three, which is then delayed with endless fractions (two and a HALF... two and three QUARTERS...).

The acting is, well, pretty good.  It ought to be; Schumacher's no novice and his cast is top-notch.  Cage delivers at least two classic meltdowns that are sure to be tacked onto the famed "Nicolas Cage Loses His Shit" video.  Kidman tries with all her might to make her character believable, but the screenplay's insurmountable plot twists put her through the blender to the point where playing this part is impossible.  I enjoyed Mendelsohn too, in a rare villainous role, and he relishes a ridiculous scene in which he does a perfect impression of Cage on a call from the family's home security company.

A good thriller, even one with a twisty-turny plot, is not allowed to cheat.  This one does, particularly in a sub-plot involving the Gigandet character and his relationship with Sarah.  Did she have an affair with him?  Is he merely infatuated with her?  Differing flashbacks seem to suggest both.  In a movie with this many security cameras, it ought to have been easy to clear up.

We can also never quite be sure what the burglars' motive is.  Just what they're after is shifted so many times that I began to suspect I was watching a Pinter-like drama in which the characters represent archetypes and their present actions and motivations don't matter. (In fact, there was one of those: when Harold Pinter rewrote Sleuth in 2007.) The biggest twist that the movie provides is that the four criminals are not masterminds as we originally thought, but very, very stupid.  The Mendelsohn character appears to be the smart one, but we know that at one point he thought, "I have a big heist to pull off.  I'd better bring along a big thug who just wants to hurt people, my drug addict girlfriend, and a guy who's in love with the wife."

A good version of this movie has already been made.  It's called Panic Room, it was directed by David Fincher and starred Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart.  It has pretty much the same plot as this one.  The villains are the same type: the thoughtful leader (Forest Whitaker), the young hotspur (Jared Leto), and the violent thug (Dwight Yoakam).  But it was cleverly written and played fair by its own rules.  There's no real reason for Trespass's existence, other than that Joel Schumacher can now rightfully claim that Batman & Robin was not his worst movie.

* out of ****

Caginess factor: Moderate.  About Con Air level, but nowhere near Face/Off.  (Raise the factor to "High" when you realize that Cage delayed production for a day and insisted that he switch roles to play the villain.  Note that Liev Schreiber was approached to take over Cage's role.  This must have been Kidman's call, as he's married to her best friend Naomi Watts.  Further evidence of her going above and beyond to hold this godawful movie together.)

SEEKING JUSTICE (2011) and the Inauguration to the Nicolas Cage Roulette Challenge

Nicolas Cage Roulette

Nicolas Cage occupies a curious role in pop culture, I think unlike any celebrity around.  Never has an actor been so simultaneously adored, hated, admired, and mocked.  He has a reputation for never turning down a role, but rarely is he ever forgettable even in the dullest piece of garbage.  He's infamous for giving big loud performances in big loud action movies, and he's known to have an ego to match, but good filmmakers (Werner Herzog, in particular) profess to have enjoyed working with him.

He also tends throw his weight behind movies that, I think, he just really wants to see made.  The films he appears in and produces are usually interesting and unique, if not always very good.  He drove Drive Angry, a sublimely trashy '70s throwback action movie which I loved, into production.  He was a force behind Shadow of the Vampire, which featured Willem Dafoe as the "real" vampire who played Count Orlock in F.W. Murnau's original Nosferatu.  He unfortunately also spearheaded the lousy Neil LaBute remake of The Wicker Man, which was unsuccessful, but it at least featured the unforgettable image of Cage in a bear suit punching out women in a Three Stooges fashion for much of the third act.

So it's understandable that Cage has a cult following.  He has a subreddit dedicated to him called r/onetruegod, which is more reverent than you would think.  It's where I found Nicolas Cage Roulette, a program designed by Scott Luptowski.  Click and it brings you to a random Cage movie on Netflix Instant.

And so the challenge is on.  I'll be watching random Cage movies until there are no more.

The first one to come up was Seeking Justice.

 

Seeking Justice breezed through theaters alarmingly quickly considering its A-list cast and veteran director.  Though no one would label Roger Donaldson an auteur, his considerable resume includes some actual good films, like the Cuban Missile Crisis thriller Thirteen Days, and some enjoyable trash, like the gore-and-nudity-filled Freudian alien opus Species.  He's also been responsible for some memorably awful movies, like Cocktail, which featured Tom Cruise juggling Tanqueray bottles and reciting poetry for bar patrons who ought to have been getting impatient for their drinks.  Donaldson may be no Scorsese, but he's not a nobody either.

I have to assume he simply got a kick out of tackling a ridiculous action thriller like Seeking Justice, kind of like Richard Rush must have taken on Color of Night as his only film in 14 years just for giggles.  Seeking Justice doesn't have the nerve to be as loopy as that film, but it does feel similarly pieced together from spare parts.  Donaldson and his cast are game, and everyone does an earnest job, but boy, the writing has really done this movie in from the beginning.

When his wife is raped, mild-mannered high school English teacher Will Gerard (Cage) is approached by a mysterious man named Simon (Guy Pearce), who professes to be from a secret organization of vigilantes.  He offers to find and kill the rapist before the police can.  No payment will be required, though Simon alleges that he may call on Will for a favor or two sometime in the future.  With little hesitation and only a few seconds of patented Nic Cage facial distress, Will agrees.  The rapist is dispensed with and all is well.  But after a few months--you guessed it--Simon calls and demands that Will pay up, in some undesirable ways.

Looking at the plot description beforehand, I thought for sure that the movie was a screed on vigilanteism.  After seeing the film, I have to assume that that was screenwriters' original intention, but that Donaldson realized that the screenplay was too silly beyond belief to be taken seriously, so he filmed it as a brainless action thriller.  The movie's no more about the morality of vigilanteism than The Wicker Man was about the process of honey production.  It's more interested in traveling down the rabbit hole of a conspiracy theory plot, with goofy twists and turns along the way.

Once the movie launches into its unlikely plot, it's easy to forget that it actually started with a woman being raped.  A movie that begins with such a thematically weighty occurrence is asking to be taken seriously, and Seeking Justice doesn't hold up its end.  For what is supposed to be the movie's instigating force, the rape is pretty much forgotten by the 30-minute mark, and the rest of the film goes off on the tangent of Will performing tasks for Simon's organization, police getting involved, and so on.  As the wife in question, January Jones is appropriately disposable.

Cage, as usual, is a trooper.  He runs through all the usual action movie tropes, and does the whole Innocent Man Wrongfully Accused rigmarole--the escape from jail, the multiple chase scenes, the amateur sleuthing--with a straight face.  Still, no actor could be convincing as a character this boneheaded.  Pearce is a delightfully smarmy villain, and usually fun to watch, especially when he's shouting meaningless orders to Cage just to make sure he's on board. ("Go into the store.  Buy a pack of gum.")

Harold Perrineau turns up as Will's best friend, though how his character fits into the story is difficult to buy.  Blink and you'll miss Jennifer Carpenter as another confidante.  The dude who played T-Dog on "The Walking Dead" turns up as a henchman.  Xander Berkeley is a welcome presence as a streetwise detective, though it's impossible to figure out his role in the movie's grand scheme.  Is he a cop?  A higher-up in the organization?  A double agent?  His actions in the third act are pretty inscrutable in all of those scenarios.

Seeking Justice certainly isn't dull, though it's unacceptable as a thriller.  Donaldson actually manages a few neat action sequences, the most interesting of which involves a foot chase between Simon's men and Will across a New Orleans highway.  Even so, there have been more ridiculous thrillers that have been more fun.  Seeking Justice doesn't cut it.

* 1/2 out of ****

Caginess level: Mild.  Somewhere between National Treasure and Gone in Sixty Seconds.