Just days ago I lauded my main man Nicolas
Cage for his amazing work in the amazing film 'Joe'. I
mentioned that there is a generation of young people who
really have no idea how good an actor this cat can be when he
is really feeling it, but 'Joe' let those punks know who the
king can be. The reasons these punks don't know this is
because of movies like this one, like 'Rage'. Is this
'Rage' a terrible movie? No… not really, just like
'Stolen' wasn't a terrible movie or 'Trespass' wasn't a
terrible movie or 'Seeking Justice' wasn't a terrible
movie. We could go on, but these are the movies these
kids are more in tune to watching from Nicolas Cage. Run
of the mill, inconsequential movies which quite seriously
could be done by anyone, with Nic apparently cashing the check
then moving on the next worthless project he will sleepwalk
through. Actually, they could probably be done better by
hiring almost anyone else since I'd have much rather had seen
Jean Claude Van Damme in most of these movies than Nic Cage,
truth be told.
Paul McGuire (Cage) used to be a bad man, but now he's just
honest hard working titan of industry and family man trying to
make things good for his hot wife Vanessa (Rachel Nichols) and
his teenaged daughter Caitlin (Aubrey Peeples). Then one
day while out of to dinner, Top Cop St. John (Danny Glover)
informs Paul that somebody has kidnapped Caitlin, which has
Paul thinking that maybe his past has come back to haunt him.
Paul doesn't really want to do this, but it is looking like
he's going to have to dust off those long put away badass
skills and start cracking some heads to find out who has
snatched his little girl, made all the more odd that these bad
people have yet to make any ransom demands. So Paul
grabs his lifelong running partners Kane (Max Ryan) and Danny
(Michael McGrady), and they go about the business of doing
what they do.
As it so happens, a few years back as a
really young men Paul, Kane and Danny did something they
really shouldn't have done which turned out really bad, but
considering these three are the only ones who knew what went
down, the secret should still be safe. But something has
happened which has Paul thinking that somehow, someway these
people who they did this wrong too have found out and are
looking for retribution. Now Paul is truly on a mission
to get to the bottom of this mess, and he will punch, stab,
kill, shoot, kick and stab again… because Paul really likes
his knife… to find out the information he needs to
know. And he will stab anybody.
Anybody. When he probably didn't need to stab nobody.
Okay… 'Rage', directed by Paco Cabezas, isn't an awful
movie. It is a movie starring an actor that is actually
good enough to sleepwalk through a movie and can still muster
up ways to be interesting, it has a story about an enraged
dude seeking vengeance, and while that's a pretty standard
premise, it's still a premise we can get with and this movie
does have its fair share of action sequences and violence to
at least keep us awake for the majority of its running
time. I've seen worse.
I've also seen better which is the main problem with 'Rage' in
that it is just so darned mediocre and is filled with stuff
that we've all seen many times before. I will say, in
defense of 'Rage', that there are one or two things in regards
to the plot that are a little different, they do throw in a
couple of things that are slightly unique by way of the
narrative, but the filmmakers did not build upon these things
and instead went the route of the path much traveled, and gave
us a bit of twist near the end that we did see coming… but
just a little more on that later.
Recognizing that Nic Cage is just floating around in his own
movie, giving just enough effort to appear that he cares a
little bit, some of the other cast members do their best to
help keep 'Rage' from being awful. Max Ryan as an actor
just looks the part, somebody should probably cast this cat as
the lead in one of these throw away, tax write-off action
movies and see how that flies, this one comes to mind, Pasha
D. Lynchinkoff is pretty intimidating as the heavy in this
movie, and Rachel Nichols exists. This alone helps keep
the movie watchable. Danny Glover looked like he
could've used some shock paddles just to keep going and Peter
Stromare playing an old Irishman was pretty damned funny.
The thing about the resolution to the problem, or the twist as
it were in this movie, is that it seems to us just a tiny bit
of rudimentary police work should've solved the problem.
Nothing Sherlockian or anything, just checking the crime
scene. And one would think that a guy speeding through
the city streets, wrecking cars and stabbing people would get
more than just a stern talking to by our nearly comatose Chief
of Police.
Like was mentioned, 'Rage' isn't awful and it does have a few
things that keep it above water, but with a tired narrative,
weak dialog, and suspect action… it's not that far above
water.
