
Ordering “Sympathy for the Devil” to be “god awful” is not merely an attempt to be smart and clever with words. Nicolas Cage is back in the “let’s see what sticks” mode of taking on projects. Directed by Yuval Adler, written by Luke Paradise, and co-produced by Cage. This is a “two-hander,” in the realm of theater, because Joel Kinnaman, the Ordinary Dude, finds himself in the company of a maniacal killer. The evildoer with a gun drags him away from Las Vegas and toward the unknown.
Kinnaman’s character, who remains nameless for now, is told that there is a hospital nearby, and he is going to be a father soon. This makes his head stronger because he thinks about kissing his cute little boy. On his way to the parking garage, we find a man with crimson hair, an evil goatee, and a revolver. Cage (did you guess?) is also nameless in his character “The Passenger.” This risk of not having fully developed characters can pay off only if the film is good enough; otherwise, it feels highly pretentious, which is indeed the case here.
The biggest issue we have here is that neither of these characters is compelling.
Kinnaman is about to be a father for the second time, which is great, but there are a lot of abnormal people who are repugnant and indifferent fathers. As for Cage’s character, he is not a character at all. He’s a Nic Cage mood ring made to let Nic Cage portray all sorts of over-the-top Nic Cage characters. He sweats. He bulges his eyes. He smiles devilishly. He screams. He yells. And puts Alicia Bridge’s ‘I Love the Nightlife’ on the jukebox at the diner he is about to mow down, wailing the words as he dances to the tune. By this point in the film, just over 52 minutes in, I was reasonably certain my viewing sessions should be classified as combat pay.
Is there a plot? Well, yes. Cage’s character firmly asserts that he has an acquaintance named David from long ago. Considering the things he talks about – criminal bookkeeping, an insanity spree, murder, and some shady murderous world figures. It sounds like that “long ago” was true during the 1995 Sundance Film Festival when a million wannabe Tarantinos were thriving.
While the story itself isn’t too tedious, Cage explains what Kinnaman is in for if he shoots him in the face or blows his head off with the revolver. Is the verbal depiction of getting zapped in the head or upper face more of a psychological torture than just having a gun exposed and pointed towards those areas? This movie seems to think so. Although this may be more of an issue of killing time, allowing Cage “provocative” comments during this pointless mixed media exercise.
Perhaps he warms his readers with such shocking layers of falsehood because one of the things a character says later in the movie is: “When I was younger I had this habit”. Cage also doesn’t refrain from making comments such as: “The truth is rarely plain and never simple” and he is rather gutsy for chastising the Kinnaman character for his “cliched” family saga.
Let me, however, make it clear that it is not just a two-hander exercise. There is a policeman, some unfortunate fate shall befall him, and there are people who work in the diner and people who eat there. Guess the fate that awaits them. “We still have miles to go before we sleep,” Cage’s superficial Devil claims in the movie’s early stages. And that, indeed, is the feeling one gets.
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