Nicolas Cage isn’t nuts enough in the fitfully demented Prisoners Of the Ghostland
Too rarely does Sion Sono's first movie in English achieve any gonzo fun
Film Reviews Prisoners Of The Ghostland
Early in Prisoners Of The Ghostland, Nicolas Cage, playing a protagonist known only as Hero (presumably because Neal Stephenson had already used Hiro Protagonist), is assigned an impossible mission, tricked into donning a black leather jumpsuit studded with explosives, and handed the keys to what looks like a turbocharged Toyota Celica GT-Four. Hero gets into the car, revs the engine, performs a badass-looking donut for the assembled throng… and then stops, exits the vehicle, and proceeds to commandeer what’s clearly a child’s bicycle, furiously pedaling off to intrigue and danger. Classic gonzo Cage, but the absurdity doesn’t last long; someone follows Hero in the car and forces him to stop, at which point he sighs, acknowledges that the clock is ticking (on the explosives in his jumpsuit, if nothing else), and drives away in the Celica like an ordinary action star. In hindsight, it’s a moment that feels frustratingly emblematic.
Why Hero needed any vehicle is something of a mystery. The first movie predominately in English from Japanese director Sion Sono (Tokyo Tribe, Why Don’t You Play In Hell?), Prisoners Of The Ghostland aims to be a samurai western set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia—part Sukiyaki Western Django, part Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The film essentially has only two sets, however, and it’s been shot and edited in a way that inadvertently suggests they’re separated by about 75 yards. We first encounter Samurai Town, a standard Main Street drag in Japanese dress, where everyone’s Asian excepting the four main characters. Jailed for a bank robbery he committed with sidekick Psycho (Nick Cassavetes), Hero gets summoned by the Governor (Bill Moseley), who offers him a deal: rescue the Governor’s ostensible granddaughter, Bernice (Sofia Boutella), who’s been abducted by vague supernatural beings in a region called the Ghostland, and he can go free. If he tries to harm Bernice, explosives in his arms will go off; if he gets sexually excited by her, his testicles are in danger. And if he fails to deliver Bernice safely within five days, a charge around his neck will impose the death penalty.
At its best, this is the kind of movie in which at least one of the testicle charges does in fact get triggered, provoking a deranged Cage bellow and (later on) one of the actor’s patented cranked-to-11 line readings. On the whole, however, he looks fitfully committed here, coasting on generic intensity; Hero boasts all the specificity of his name, which demands an archetypal approach (à la Eastwood’s Man With No Name), and that’s just not really in Cage’s wheelhouse. Boutella, likewise, has nothing to play, and resorts to screaming and snarling. What keeps Ghostland from flatlining is Sono’s gift for delirious spectacle, along with the movie’s tacit acknowledgment that it’s utterly ridiculous. We never get a clear sense of the evil that controls this self-enclosed world (or even why people can’t just leave), but we do get victims outfitted in arresting jigsaw-mannequin face masks, and a bank designed to resemble the interior of a gumball machine (even before an actual, ludicrously huge gumball machine in the lobby sends candy colors flying), and exposition that’s delivered first in un-subtitled Japanese, then repeated/translated by a dancing Greek chorus. There’s not quite enough of such inspired lunacy to plug the film’s gaping narrative holes or compensate for its thinly drawn characters, but at least there’s always something to stave off boredom.
Given the many pistols and samurai swords on view, it’s a bit surprising that there’s so little over-the-top action. One extended slice-and-dice set piece, accompanied by Jim Croce’s “Time In A Bottle” (a song that had already been turned into one of the all-time great needle drops, but whatever), delighted viewers when Prisoners Of The Ghostland premiered at Sundance nine months ago; our own A.A. Dowd called the sequence “solid” and “Tarantino-grade” (which one might argue is a contradiction in terms, but, again, whatever). Mysteriously, however, that scene doesn’t appear in the cut of Ghostland that’s currently being provided to critics, and it presumably isn’t in the cut that audiences will be able to see. Music rights usually get secured promptly nowadays—those issues generally involve either older films and TV episodes transferred to a new platform/medium or ultra-low-budget productions that can’t afford the song in question—so it’s unclear why this apparent crowdpleaser got pulled. Shame, though, as a sporadically entertaining, maddeningly incoherent movie like Prisoners Of The Ghostland can use every diversion it’s got.
11 Comments
It’s absolutely insane that a movie directed by Sion Sono, starrring Nic Cage, with the plot of Escape From New York and the visual aesthetic of Mad Max Fury Road could be SO damn bland and boring.
The mention of Nick Cassavetes reminds me of a bizarre story from my college days:So I worked at the student store on campus, specifically in the computer store section. Most of what we sold had academic discounts so we could only sell to students and faculty. We also did tech support; we could fix Apple stuff (for free, if you had AppleCare, although we usually shipped it off to Apple to fix if it was beyond our repair guy’s ken—this was before the Apple Store existed). Unofficially we would also help students/staff with tech support stuff, up to a point (we didn’t charge for it, so if it was busy then management didn’t want us spending half an hour on the phone helping someone set up their email).Anyway, one day this guy (I think a grad student) calls and says he thinks someone hacked into his computer and deleted some files. He says he knows the name of the guy who did it, because the guy left a file with his name in it on the computer. I ask him to tell me the name, because I’m curious.“Sure, it’s first name Nick, last name… let me spell it. C-A-S-S-A-V-E-T-E-S.”I stood there for probably ten or fifteen seconds trying to wrap my brain around it. Is this guy fucking with me? Is he looking at some random file on his computer that happens to mention Nick Cassavetes? Did someone leave a file with Nick Cassavetes’s name on his computer as a prank? What the hell is happening?“Sir, uh, Nick Cassavetes is a well-known actor, I don’t think he hacked into your computer.”The call ended pretty swiftly after that. I never did find out what the hell it was all about.
That’s how Nick keeps getting away with it.
The film is not Sono’s best or most daring work, but it is a crazily enjoyable b-movie riff that definitely reflects his unique sensibility. I saw the film during virtual Sundance and had a blast. It’s a shame the “Time in a Bottle” swordplay got cut (is the entire sequence cut or just rescored & edited?) because it was a gonzo setpiece. The song choice pushed it over the line into positive WTF territory.
I just watched it and unfortunately I just couldn’t enjoy it. I wanted to. I was just disappointed. I give it props for how it made its world look completely alien. Visually well made set designs. Other than that, I can’t even say it’s an entertaining crazy movie. It has moments of being crazy or visually weird. But no substance and really just an incoherent mess of 30 second visuals mashed together from an attention deficit mind.Which sounds awesome when I write it like that. But there’s the negative side of crazy and weird. And this was not an entertaining crazy weird film. Nick Cage wasn’t even at his craziest. He was more Nic Cage in Willy’s Wonderland and he didn’t even say a word in that movie.Let’s start with a PSA spoiler. The poster would make you think you’re going to see Nic Cage fight masked Mad Max crazy Samurais. Nope. He doesn’t even fight ghosts. Sorry. There are ghosts of some kind. They’re abruptly edited in and out of the movie. Including one ghost that holds a grudge against Nic Cage, but when Nic Cage said, “Please can I pass,” the ghosts pretty much said, sure why not have a good one man. And thus ends the ghost fighting. It turns out if ghosts are preventing you from leaving the lands, instead of running or fighting all you had to do was ask nicely to leave.The action in the movie….it’s sloppy. You can say it’s like a live action anime movie, but more like Larp/cosplay action. The fight scenes, the sword play are just not well choreographed. The Evander Holyfield Vs Vitor Belfort Fight was better than the action here.The story was…you get the gist of it. But they failed on world building and characters because they keep changing the rules on how the world works or character motivation to fit the scene. Basically they establish one thing but then completely ignore or forget about it the next scene because it wasn’t neccessary anymore. Some scenes really could’ve been removed because it had really nothing at all to do with the movie. And then some plot elements you would think should’ve been shot and put into the movie.
The quality of the Japanese actors ESL is a mixed bag. Some spoke well and some couldn’t speak clearly. I found it funny how one actress would speak Chinese but their subtitle would say she’s speaking Japanese. Oh, at the beginning of the film there was one Geisha actress talking to Bernice whose Geisha robe just gradually came down showing her topless. I don’t think that was intentional. I think it was a wardrobe malfunction, but they either didn’t catch it or figured just keep it in. Cause there’s really no nudity or sex of any kind in this movie. And if that was supposed to be a shot of gratuitous nudity, then it was horribly done.If you’re a huge fan of Nic Cage, then yeah this movie is worth checking it out once anytime. However it might be one of those movies where you watch with a group of friends with one or two are liking it or defending it, while the others are complaining or just losing interest and going back into their phones. Other than that, I can’t say skip this movie, but for me it definitely falls under the whole “watch it if you have nothing better to do” category.
I read this review and your comment after seeing the movie and was surprised by the topless reference. I like topless and didn’t recall seeing any. So I rewatched the beginning and saw what you alluded to but was quite frankly disappointed. The possibly accidental robe slip did occur, and apparently was obscured by some kind of pinkish haze hiding the key component and major attraction of topless. Frankly, it was a complete bust.Everything you say is pretty much correct. There is no coherent story, it’s a string of visually interesting set pieces, a mish mash of tropes, and makes no sense whatsoever. But it’s not intended to make sense and getting annoyed by that makes it impossible to enjoy the experience.I liked it enough to not consider my time wasted. Nick Cage is Nick Cage here. He goes bug-eyed in a couple of places and delivers dumb inane lines with gamely. I liked the brief shout-out to ‘Lone Wolf and Cub’ buried amidst the noise and hugger-mugger.
I do like Nic Cage. And I couldn’t sleep that night so I did check it out. I was disappointed, but it wasn’t a terrible movie. Just not an entertaining crazy weird movie for me. I think personally it’s equal to the 2005 Japanese film Death Trance which I can say gives me pretty much the same feeling.
“Frankly, it was a complete bust.”
Sure you don’t mean an incomplete bust?
Uh oh… The internet is a fan of Nic Cage in the 2020s.
This isn’t Sion Sono best but it’s so far it’s a pretty terrible but fun b 70s/90s film.
Why doesn’t anyone mention the fact that the plot sounds EXACTLY like John Carpenter’s “Escape from …” movies?