DYING OF THE LIGHT (2014) ***

At first glance, Dying of the Light has all the earmarks of a bad DTV flick.  It was made by Grindstone Entertainment, has a shitty Photoshop poster, and stars Nicolas Cage.  If you look closer though, you’ll see it was written and directed by Paul (Hardcore) Schrader and produced by Nicholas Winding (Drive) Refn, which is hardly the guarantee it will be good, but at least it’ll be interesting or memorable.  Apparently, the studio recut it against Schrader’s wishes, leading him to disown the final product.  I can’t speak to that version of the film, but the one that was released is a couple notches better than your typical Cage DTV flick.

Cage stars as an aging CIA agent who is nearing retirement.  When he learns the man who captured and disfigured him twenty years earlier is still alive, he risks everything to get revenge.  Complicating matters is his recent diagnosis of an advanced form of dementia, which gets increasingly worse at sundown, leaving him prone to fits of rage and the inability to trust his senses.  

I think this might be the first DTV Cage flick in which his character has a medical condition to help explain his over the top Cagey theatrics.  As such, he doesn’t chew the scenery as much as you’d think, but he does have a few choice moments of unbridled thespianism.  In fact, this is one of his best performances in recent memory, no doubt aided by the fact that Schrader was at the helm and he had fine back-up in the form of the late Anton Yelchin, who plays the junior agent who gives up everything to assist him in his quest for vengeance.    

Visually, the film falls well short of something like Schrader’s Cat People, but it does look better than your average DTV fare.  Thematically, it’s similar in some ways to the Schrader-scripted Rolling Thunder, although not nearly as effective.  Despite its flaws (and the fact that just about everyone involved disowned it), Dying of the Light remains a solid thriller that should please fans of not only Schrader, but Cage as well.

Cage and Schrader teamed up two years later with Dog Eat Dog.

AKA:  Dark.