By Geno McGahee
The recent run of Nicolas Cage has not been spectacular. I have been waiting for him to hit it out of the park again. SEEKING JUSTICE isn’t Cage’s best movie, but it’s pretty damn good. I have been comparing Cage to Steven Seagal a lot lately because of their comparable bad straight to video action films. Cage has separated himself with this one. This is a very good flick.
We begin with Will Gerard (Cage) dealing with a tragedy. His wife, Laura (January Jones) was viciously raped and beaten and is now lying in a hospital bed. Cage brings the typical fury and anxiety to this role and begins letting the rage get the best of him…then the emotion hits. As he sits in the waiting room, gathering his thoughts, he is approached by Simon (Guy Pearce).
Simon represents a group of vigilantes that take out the scummier side of humanity and he offers to have his group snuff the rapist if Will gives him the green light…and there’s one catch. If Will agrees, he owes the group one favor, but it’s downplayed by Simon. It would be something as simple as dropping off an envelope. Reluctantly, Will agrees, and the rapist is shot in the head and he and his wife can return to normal, but that’s when Will’s phone rings.
Simon is calling in the favor and asks Cage to go to the zoo to drop off an envelope. While at the zoo, he is called and told to open it and there is a picture of Alan Marsh (Jason Davis). Cage’s assignment is to kill Marsh, a child pornographer…well, they tell him that he is a child pornographer. He turns out to be a journalist that has been trying to expose this group. Cage refuses to do it and is given another option: kill Marsh or they will kill his wife.
With his back to the wall, Cage decides that he can kill a child pornographer if it means sparing his wife. He fights with Marsh and Marsh falls to his death, but Cage had nothing to do with it. Marsh was attacking and basically launched himself over a bridge to the highway below. The deal is done and now Cage can return to his normal life again…until he is arrested for murder. That’s when he finds out that Marsh was not a child pornographer.
Cage is on the run with the police and this secret group on his tail. The vigilante group has the surveillance video that proves his innocence and Cage finds a bargaining chip to get it. He finds the file that Marsh had on the group and wants to make the trade. That file for the video to get his life back. The problem is that you cannot trust Simon and we end in a big shoot out and cool ending.
SEEKING JUSTICE is a good action/thriller. Cage can be very good if he’s giving the right script and this was a very good story and it gave Cage something to work with. I recommend this.
Rating: 7/10
