The beginning of an era...and not a good one...

Rating: 2/10 (25 July 2005)

This film, sadly, began a string of films in the Nicolas Cage pantheon which I refer to as "must avoid" films. Now it is not that I don't think Nicolas Cage can be a good actor. I think he was fine in The Rock, because he played a shlubby scientist who was sort of bumbling his way through action movie heroics with Sean Connery. And more recently I did enjoy Cage in Adaptation. However, in this piece of claptrap he is "the hero" Camerone Poe, which is such a fake sounding name, by the way. Then again, it fits, because the whole movie is filled with these paper thin "bad guys" who are so one-note jokes. Buscemi is the only one who somewhat elevates the material to something watchable, and even then it's just barely. Monica Potter plays the wife of Cage, and she is nothing but vapid airiness as well. There was nothing to grab a hold of, nothing substantial, and with Cage making these hokey one-liners and swaggering all around with his then recently muscled physique. I was praying for this movie to end, and I was happy to be out of the theater when it was. Special effects are all well and good, but this goose egg can't be saved by anything.