From writer-director Luke Paradise comes Sympathy for the Devil. The film stars Nicolas Cage (Renfield) as an unhinged psychopath who kidnaps a man (Joel Kinnaman) at gunpoint, taking viewers on a wild ride during a night filled with action and insanity.
While en route to the hospital where his wife is in labor, a man is taken at gunpoint by a red-headed stranger and is forced to drive him to various locations where the stranger takes out his anger by killing innocent people.
The stranger is played by Nicolas Cage, who comes off like a sadistic asshole with zero f*cks to give. He’s clearly unhinged, but not in a good way. It’s just weird. Maybe I expect too much out of Cage, I mean, he’s usually an expert at playing crazy. As for Joel Kinnaman, who starred as the driver, a worried husband, and father, he did a fine job. However, his character is lackluster and a bit boring.
We get action sequence after action sequence, with all being bloody and brutal, but there is no opportunity for us to become attached to any of the secondary characters. They are just cannon fatter.
The big twist that reveals why Cage is after the man. The twist was a good one but comes late in the film. Maybe too late. It also makes a lot of the events of the night pointless.
The whole point of the story is for us to feel sympathy for the bad guy (hence the title), but when the big reveal happens, I have to ask the question how are we expected to feel sorry for Cage when he’s killing innocent people? How are we supposed to feel empathy for either of them? Sadly, I have zero “sympathy for the devil,” for either of them. And for a movie with that title, that’s not good.
Sympathy for the Devil opens in theaters on July 28, 2023. Watch it and let us know what you think.
