Seeking Justice

Working Class Hero?

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Rated: R  Brief sexuality, violence and language
Release Date: March 16, 2012
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins

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Director:  Roger Donaldson

Writers: Todd Hickey, Robert Tannen
Cast:  Nicolas Cage, January Jones, Guy Pearce, Jennifer Carpenter, IronE Singleton, Harold Perrineau, Xander Berkeley

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SYNOPSIS: When his wife is sexually assaulted, school teacher Will Gerard accepts the offer from a vigilante group to avenge her. What he doesn't realize is that the 'favor' they ask him to carry out afterward is more than what he bargained for.

REVIEW: Roger Donaldson, directors of such intrigue films as The Recruit and The Bank Job, takes a story and script from first time writer and longtime cinematographer Todd Hickey and relative new screenwriter Robert Tannen. Starring Nicolas Cage, one of the hardest working actors in show business, will Seeking Justice find the justice it seeks?

High school teacher and chess enthusiast Will Gerard (Nicolas Cage, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance)   enjoys the New Orleans scene with his musician wife Laura (January Jones, X-Men: First Class) and his friends and co-workers. One night, when Laura is sexually assaulted and put into the hospital, Will is approached by a mysterious man named Simon (Guy Pearce, The King's Speech) who ensures Will that his organization can and will silence the assailant for good if Will agrees to help the organization in the near future when they ask for his assistance. Unable to watch his wife suffer in pain, Will agrees and the deed is carried out. A few months later, when Will is asked by Simon to carry a letter to a mail box in front of the zoo, the favor is upped to following a mother and two daughters, then ramped up to the request to carry out an assassination of an accused pedophile. When Will refuses, he and his wife are put into danger by the same organization that aided them in the first place. Running out of time, Will must try to expose the organization before it destroys him. 

Nicolas Cage has recently tarnished his acting star with a string of less than stellar films including Season of the Witch and The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Even with genre anticipated films like the Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance sequel and a comic book favorite film of mine, Kick-Ass, some look at Cage's current career path as on the decline. He has certainly come a long way down from Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas, or even the National Treasure franchise. With Seeking Justice, Cage does pump the brakes a little by putting out a decent product.

Nicolas Cage tempers the caricature of himself that even SNL's Andy Samberg has perfected on the segment 'Inside the Cage, with Nicolas Cage'. When Cage is not mugging or staring wide-eyed, his character actually comes down to earth enough to be believable and distraught. January Jones channels sympathy instead of her signature distain from Mad Men as she recovers from her physical and psychological trauma. Guy Pearce beefs up a little, probably in preparation of the upcoming space prison sci-fi flick Lockout, and cuts an imposing and dangerous figure as the vigilante group figure head  Simon. Harold Perrineau (Lost) as Will's principal boss and friend, and Jennifer Carpenter (Gone) as Laura's musician friend Trudy keep to the background until the story plots require them to step forward. Some of the 'organization's' henchmen like Scar (IronE Singleton, The Walking Dead) have larger roles than some of the bigger name actors and actresses. 


Seeking Justice is the type of film that is reminiscent of 1990s films like Johnny Depp's Nick of Time where a seemingly unprepared and unlikely middle-class man is forced to go beyond his comfort zone against an established organization that has unlimited resources, a powerful reach into law enforcement, and expertise in misdirection, mayhem and violence. In this case, the protagonist dies not take retribution into his own hands to avenge his wife's assailant, but is forced to take action nonetheless when his decisions to have someone else kill for him comes back to haunt him. 

By no means is Seeking Justice Cage's best work, but it is a solid action drama thriller whose script has been brought to full life by the expert hands of its director Roger Donaldson, and by the work of the film's protagonists in Cage and January Jones, and its antagonist Guy Pearce. If you can't get into Jonah Hill's 21 Jump Street, you can always fall back onto Seeking Justice as a second choice if you really need a couple chases or guns pointed in your face.

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WORTH: Matinee or Rental

X-Men: First Class

Meets Xpectations

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Writers: Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn, Sheldon Turner Bryan Singer

Stars: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Nicholas Hoult

SYNOPSIS: Before they opposed what each stood for on mutant/human relations, Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr were friends and worked together to set up a school for those with mutant abilities.

Before Wolverine joined the team, an entire generation of comic readers remained riveted to the origins of Marvel Comics' X-Men. Set in the backdrop of a semi-historical look of 1963 and the Cuban Missile Crisis during President Kennedy's administration, director Matthew Vaughn and a series of writers (including Bryan Singer) put to film something that Marvel Comics does so well - namely, the ability to interlace the fiction of superheroes and mutants with the realities of ongoing real-life events. Where DC Comics has the fictional Gotham City and Metropolis, the Marvel "bullpen" churned out story after story using the skyscrapers of New York City and the sprawl of the surrounding boroughs to bring us Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and a team of mutants living in a world that fears and hates them.

But avid comic reader and geek graphic novel historians beware! The 1963 team of X-Men in the film, although an origin story, has few parallels with the comic where a wheelchair-bound Professor X, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman and Angel battled against an already embittered Magneto. In X-Men: First Class, the only member of the original comic team is Beast (Nicholas Hoult), last seen in 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand, as an adviser scientist fur ball played by Kelsey Grammer. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence from Winter's Bone) returns (can you return to an origin story?) as a younger self not yet completely loyal to the future Magneto bent on the domination over and the servitude of all homo sapiens. The rest of the team consists of Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), an Irish lad Sean Cassidy with a sonic scream, Havoc (Lucas TIll), Cyclops' brother Alex Summers with his own barely-controlled concussive blasts, and Darwin (Edi Gathegi), a mutant with the ability to adapt for survival.

The relationship between Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) is compelling throughout the film. Xavier's bright and sometimes naive expectation that mutants and mankind can coexist flying in the face of the beliefs held by Erik based on an upbringing of Nazi concentration camps, murder and experimentation. Lifting the Magneto origin straight from the original X-Men opener and expanding it is a reminder of how good Bryan Singer's contribution to the X-Men franchise is.

X-Men: First Class covers much ground trying to pack in lots of "Easter eggs" and faithful beginnings to the original set of films, some good, some okay and some that makes the audience giddy and hooting with excitement. The recruiting montage that Charles and Erik spearhead after the first use of a primitive Cerebro works perfectly, funny and captivating. The villain mutant Azazel (Jason Flemying) dispatches a building full of CIA operatives that would make Nightcrawler envious. Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) is a decent evil foil against the combined efforts of Xavier and Lehnsherr, but the references to Shaw's Hellfire Club are watered down to mere passing. And Emma Frost (January Jones) as Shaw's right hand telepath, although fashioned in plenty of White Queen attire for the comic geeks to drool over, is little more than diamond eye candy with plenty of screen time. The genetic scientist Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) from the comics has been completely reworked to be a mid-level CIA spook, for better or worse.

X-Men: First Class has story, action, heart and levity, but ends up a little uneven. The original concept for a Magneto prequel by Singer evolved, like mutants, into a bigger story involving all sorts of furry and high-flying players. Although somewhat faithful to the X-films that come after it, the die-hard fans will certainly be offended by some of the liberties that the film takes over the comic source material, both in terms of chronological history and the spirit of the Marvel mythos that houses homo superior.

WORTH: Matinee or BluRay