Film Review: Seeking Justice

Only one week after his last film was released in the U.K (the truly dire Trespass), came another Nicolas Cage film. Seeking Justice came out in this country last November under the shortened name Justice, but has yet to see a U.S. release date strangely enough. It's to be released in March in the States.

Maybe it was the blow back from the disastrous box office takings (so bad in fact, the film was pulled out of cinemas and released on DVD just two weeks later) but it's actually slightly unfair on the film, because it's not the worst film Cage has done recently...

Cage plays Will Gerard, who after his wife Laura (January Jones) is raped and assaulted enlists the help of a vigilante group led by Simon (Guy Pearce) to 'seek justice' on the perpetrator. But if the group does this for him, Will owes them a favour, and six months later, they come to ask for it...

Seeking Justice is nothing original by any length, but it managed to keep this reviewer watching for the duration. There are some nice action scenes throughout, and you do wonder where Will's debt to the group is leading. It's watchable fluff, can't really add much more praise than that.

The cast is filled out by a few recognizable TV faces. As well as the aforementioned January Jones (from Mad Men of course), there's also Harold Perrineau (Michael from Lost) and unfortunately, Jennifer Carpenter from Dexter, who I feel is one of the worst actresses working today. Luckily, she is barely in it, thus saving the film from her awful acting.

Cage is OK as Will. He doesn't go O.T.T. as he has been prone to do in recent years, but by the same stroke, it's not a particularly memorable performance either, but a huge step up from stuff like Trespass and Knowing etc.

But, overall, while I didn't mind the film at all when it was on, and it kept me engaged throughout, I'm struggling to find much to recommend it to anyone. If you're after something that isn't very challenging and mildly distracting, this is the film for you.

**
An odd one. Originally, I was going to award the film 3 stars, but as I wrote the review, I struggled to find anything really good about it. It's watchable, and never dull, but not much else stands out about it.

Film Review: Trespass

Most filmmakers have peaks and troughs throughout their work, and no better example of this would be Joel Schumacer. The guy has directed some brilliant films like St. Elmo's Fire, The Lost Boys, Flatliners and Falling Down. But on the flip side, he has also helmed Bad Company, The Number 23 and most horrifically of all, Batman and Robin.

His latest film, Trespass, starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman is sadly a film that definitely falls into the trough category. And not only is it a woeful film, it was a disaster of the most epic proportions. Costing $35,000,000 to make, it raked in a dire $24,094 in its first ten days in cinemas in the States, where it was then pulled out, only to surface on DVD a mere 8 days later (making it the quickest cinema to DVD wait ever.) It is an astounding example of a flop.

And the trouble didn't even start there. Cage decided he wanted to change roles near the start of the shoot, from the husband to a kidnapper, and filmmakers even went so far as to contact Liev Schreiber to take on the role, until Cage returned the next day...playing the husband again.

The husband Cage plays is Kyle Miller, whose business is diamonds. He's married to Sarah (Kidman) and they have a rebellious teenage daughter (Liana Liberato.) One evening, they become a victim of a home invasion, but as the evening goes on, secrets are revealed and their situation gets worse and worse.

The immediate problem is that I could under no circumstances buy Cage (who is looking very paunchy in the film) and Kidman as man and wife. I just couldn't make that stretch. And matters are made worse as ridiculous plot twist follows ridiculous plot twist. It resembles a particularly bad soap opera most of the time.

The performances are diabolical across the board, also. Cage you can expect, his recent output has been increasingly bizarre, but he just phones it in, there's not even a lot there to mock after a while, and I like mocking his inferior films.

Kidman just shrieks and screams her way through the film, and the kidnappers are all pretty terrible, with a' special' note for Jordano Spiro, who was embarrassingly bad as the deranged stripper female intruder Petal (Yeah, really.) It's truly a face palm performance there. The others? Well, I have to make the soap opera comparison again as that's the level of acting we are dealing with here.

Trespass seemed liked the longest 2 hours of my life, till I finally saw it was over and had only run 85 minutes. The whole thing is an amateurish, poorly acted, boring mess. Let's just hope Joel Schumacer gets another peak soon. And as for Cage? The films so bad, he refuses to watch the finished product. Let that be the warning to heed.

*
One of the worst films of the year. There's nothing worth recommending here. Even fans of mocking Nicolas Cage's OTT style and crazy wigs will get bored after the first half hour. Absolute dreck.