Month: March 2012

Let’s not mince words here. Nicholas Cage recent work has been a smorgasbord of the cockamamie and overwrought. Returning to the New Orleans setting of Cage’s last quality film (2009’s Bad Lieutenant) Seeking Justice starts off with some promise and gradually fizzles.

After his cellist wife (January Jones) is raped after a rehearsal, Cage’s English high school teacher Will Gerard is mysteriously approached by Simon (Guy Pearce). It seems Simon is particularly effective at a mysterious sort of vigilante justice administered to the likes of rapists and child pornographers. He initially downplays the extent of Will’s debt on behalf of the quick and total revenge that will be provided. Disoriented by his grief over a wife badly bruised and still hospitalized, Will complies. Next thing you know, he’s manipulated into a series of no-good-choice actions by an increasingly clever Simon, who’s head honcho of a secret vigilante syndicate that eventually seems as widespread in the Crescent City as gumbo. While the savvy Pearce (Memento, La A. Confidential) is convincing, his almost comical omnipresence in the film is challenged only by his equally implausible omniscience. Plot holes wide enough to fill a shrimp po-boy will pass by you like flies.

Director Roger Donaldson has a made a couple of good films over the years (13 Days, No Way Out) amidst mediocre run-of-the-mill stuff (recently the Bank Job) that provided a thrill or two for every dozen shoulder shrugs and smirks. Seeking Justice comfortably falls into the latter group. Oscar winner Nicholas Cage (it’s now 16 years ago and feels every bit of it) doesn’t do anything terribly wrong here but he certainly doesn’t elevate the material either. I haven’t seen it but I hear you need to wear a straight jacket if you attend Cage’s other new film (Ghost Rider–Spirit of Vengeance) to keep yourself from self flagellation over shelling out the !0 bucks. Here you’re more likely to enjoy a few scenes like when Will sneaks into a newspaper office after hours and gives a not suspecting reporter a detailed answer to her question of grammar before she realizes he’s an intruder. Simon is so over-the-top you can swallow a certain amount of plot affronts to your intelligence. And Jones looks good while more and more of the shenanigans around her get increasingly bizarre.

But let’s face it. This film is about as smart as the scene where Will is being chased by a cop car. After an interminable race and getaway I was left with the nagging thought that New Orleans must be really broke after Katrina since they evidently can’t afford police car radios to send for help when chasing a crazed vigilante. Succumb to this film and you’ll soon realize Cage’s character wasn’t the only one to make a bargain with the devil.

5 Flying Plot Holes (out of 10)

File this one under droll and partly quaint Brit arthouse-lite vehicle saved by an Emily.

Blunt, that is. No, not the film, the Emily. Ever since playing the plain-Jane office assistant in Devil Wears Pravda, Emily Blunt’s been one to watch. As Young Victoria she was a convincing queen. Most recently she helped glide us through the sci-fi overreach The Adjustment Bureau as Matt Damon’s forbidden lass. She’s got a frisky screen presence. Here she’s the antidote to an Asberger-ish main character played by reliable if over-saturated Ewan MacGregor. (No, it only SEEMS like he’s doing ten films a year lately.)

I’ve waited until now to speak of their new film, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen because, well, it’s often about as interesting as salmon fishing in some dry river across the other side of the world. McGregor is Dr. Alfred Jones, an uber-scientist who knows a lot about fish and has about as much curiosity and adventure to his outlook and existence as your average hermit crab. His daily routines make rigid look like jello. His saving grace may well be his ability to mock himself. Even when adhering to repeat behaviors like calling Blunt by her surname Miss Chetwood-Talbot despite her invite to call her Harriet, he’s dead serious, yet somehow also aware he’s being a dweeb. Blunt’s some sort of marketing whiz hired by an ultra rich sheikh (Amr Waked) to throw a cool 50 million British pounds toward a fairy dust project of shipping a mere 10,000 salmon across the world so he and his people can, er, fish to their heart’s content. Build a dam and they will come if you add enough cash.

If you don’t drift off and start thinking about some other, better movie, you’ll encounter numerous subplots worthy of plodding through. McGregor and his wife have a paint-by-numbers marriage. Blunt falls for a dude who is soon shipped off to Afghanistan. British fishermen go into an uproar when a government agency threatens to remove most of their salt water salmon stock and ship it off to the Middle East. Farm salmon are substituted. The sheikh is a nice guy who offers McGregor aspirational life bromides worthy of Wayne Dyer. There’s a lot of fishing, which McGregor does proficiently (after all, he invented something called the Wiley Jones fly), while the sheikh gamely fishes knee-deep in his river without taking off his robes. Things eventually go well with the longshot project despite McGregor’s stiff skepticism. Then things go bad. Stick around, they may go well again before the film’s over.

The redoubtable Kristin Scott Thomas shines as a press secretary for the British Prime Minister. She’s great at ridiculing everyone around her while simultaneously getting them to do exactly what she wishes. For director Lasse Hallstrom (Cider House Rules) it’s now 27 years and nearly as many films since his masterpiece My Life As A Dog. Screenwriter Simon Beaufort (Slumdog Millionaire) adapts the Paul Today novel.

Throughout I was anchored by Blunt’s lure, which she cast off as a bemused, near tongue-in-cheek tolerance and growing affection for McGregor. He’ll eventually try to reel her in, a move not as smooth as his fly-casting. She’ll reach a low tide, then have a third-act resurgence. You’ll have lots of light chuckles and may even decide to take up a little fishing. It may be awhile, though before you’ll venture off into another fishing film. Even with a hook as good as Blunt, this one can be fishy.

6 Fishy Dweebs (out of 10)