And I thought that Nicolas Cage finally decided to start doing some good movies again!
Really wasn't expecting this movie to be as bad as it was. It's not just a bad movie but an absolutely terrible one in my opinion, that isn't exciting, engaging, surprising or entertaining to watch, in any way.
The movie uses a very typical and generic revenge movie template, yet the movie is worse than just the average genre attempt. It's a poorly made movie, with some bad directing, storytelling and 'twists' in it.
I truly had many, many different problems with this movie. One was really the fact that the movie had a terrible build up to things in it, or rather said, most of the time it used no build up at all. It's an extremely flat movie, without any good emotions or drama in it to make us feel involved. It's therefor also really hard to get behind the movie its main character and agree with all of his actions. As a matter of fact, I just could never get into the main character, played by Nicolas Cage, who's answer to everything is violence and death. He's the 'shoot first, ask questions later' type of guy, which all sounds right and awesome for a revenge flick but it all works out terribly within this particular movie.
It's a needlessly violent movie. And really, I have absolutely nothing against some awesome brutal action or any form of violence in movies, as long as it serves a purpose to the story. All of the violence in this movie is just there to shock and to feature as many kills as possible in it. It's ridicules really how basically ever character that the Nicolas Cage character runs in to has to die in a very violent and loud way. Maybe it's all something that could have worked out, as long as I would have been able to care about the Cage character and wanted to see all of the 'bad guys' suffer and end up dead by Cage character's hands. But no, the only person who does some truly insane and evil stuff throughout the entire movie is the Cage character himself. Without spoiling too much, he even kills some of his own friends, just to get to the bottom of things. And when the 'big' twist comes, it actually becomes apparent that all of it was for nothing and every single death in this movie was an absolutely pointless one. So why let us sit through 90 minutes of violence if it doesn't even add up to anything?
It's also annoying how this movie features several side-plots and secondary characters in it, who all also don't add much to the movie. So there is Danny Glover and Peter Stormare in this movie but why? Just because it looks good on the posters I guess. Most of the side-plots don't really ever go anywhere and it only distracts from the main story, which in itself is a too simplistic and nonsensical one to begin with, which forms a whole different problem for the movie.
Sure, most revenge movies are some exaggerated ones with the violence and simple ones with the story, just like this one as well but when watching this movie it still becomes very obvious to you that some real skill and talent has to go into making a good and effective revenge flick, which are both two things that are lacking from this movie though. It's never an entertaining movie to watch with any of the violence and action and never an engaging movie with either its story or characters. These two things are the foremost reasons why this movie never becomes a very good or effective one to watch.
Another low point in Cage's career.
4/10
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