Movie reviews
After a moment’s hesitation Will accepts the offer, and subsequently learns that the rapist has shot himself dead. Being a sensitive soul who teaches Shakespeare to inner-city kids, Will is initially troubled by his impulsive answer, but he soon comes to regret it entirely when Simon blackmails Will into collaborating in the murder of a child rapist. At this point the story evolves from a challenging exploration on the nature of justice, and the question of whether an individual is ever entitled to take the law into his or her own hands, into an action thriller, with Will a compromised hero doing the wrong thing for what he believes are the right reasons. That in itself would be no bad thing, but in order to keep the audience rooting for Will, the story quickly descends to farcical levels via a number of implausible twists and turns, very few of which are original or interesting. Roger Donaldson’s direction maintains a taut pace and barrelling momentum, but this is achieved at the expense of anything remotely akin to character development, as when the early exploration of Will’s fraught relationship with his traumatised wife, Laura (January Jones), is jettisoned in favour of running, shooting and yet more facile twists and turns.
A MORE interesting Nicolas Cage movie is Trespass (18s), which opened last week. Here Cage plays freelance diamond salesman Kyle Miller, an ostensibly successful businessman whose failings in life are brutally exposed when a gang breaks into his home and demands that he hands over the diamonds in his safe. Kyle appears to have no choice but to agree when the gang takes his wife Sarah (Nicole Kidman) and daughter Avery (Liano Liberato) hostage, but Kyle is a wily negotiator, and soon the story begins shooting off on a number of unexpected tangents. Director Joel Schumacher coaxes a performance that eschews Cage’s usual limited range of tics, with the result that the Millers’ predicament quickly becomes a very compelling one. It helps that Sarah has a number of dirty secrets of her own to conceal, and that Kidman puts in a fine support performance, and while the fracturing of the gang’s solidarity under the unexpected pressure exerted by Kyle and Sarah is a little predictable, the uncertainty this creates contributes handsomely to the tension that fuels a fascinating thriller. Some of the characterisations are clumsy, particularly that of the junkie gang member who cracks under the strain, but Ben Mendelsohn and Cam Gigandet, as warring brothers who bring their own ulterior motives to the home invasion, provide an entirely believable menace. It’s a long way off Joel Schumacher’s best work, but Trespass is a relentless emotional roller-coaster that maintains its furious pace right to the final credits.
