We find ourselves in the wake of post hurricane Katrina. Terrence McDonagh Cage is a good cop. He talks big, but does the right thing by injuring himself saving a prisoner who is about to drown in a locked jail cell. The result of his compassion leads to his addiction to painkillers that sends his life into the ultimate tailspin of sex, drugs, shakedowns and murder. In a scary scene, Cage even cuts the oxygen off to an elderly woman and holds his magnum to the head of her elderly caretaker.
He is defiantly an acquired taste. This film is near excellent through the way Herzog experiments with the genre. Plain and simple. Sure there was the media war between Herzog and Ferrera where Ferrera claimed he was being raped, and Herzog claimed to not even know who Ferrera was. These men are way too smart for that. Oh, and the producer of this film Edward Pressman also produced the film.
The ensemble Herzog puts together for this film is grade-fucking-A! This film makes you feel like you are smoking crack. It haunts you, scares you, and makes you laugh and even smile. All of our emotions are affected by every second of this film.
The film takes us from one unbelievable event to another, its mindboggling watching Cage scurry from one scene to another, and you are just waiting for him to explode. Finkelstein who turns a great performance as Dave Jacobs, the guy chasing after Cage for money delivers an excellent script upon which Herzog and Cage thrive. What keeps this film from me giving it a 10 is the ending.
Bottom line Werner Herzog is a great, great filmmaker and Nicholas Cage gives a career best performance. I have always been Frank. View all posts by Frank Mengarelli. Glad you got to check this out.
