Mandy

It's been a downhill trajectory for Nicolas Cage since the 90's. The height of his stardom. An Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas, the triple whammy of The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off. Lovely romantic comedies like It Could Happen To You and Honeymoon In Vegas. A superb modern day film noir in Red Rock West. The underrated Scorsese psychological drama Bringing Out The Dead. It truly was a decade of work that anyone would be proud of. Nothing since has been as good. A couple like Lord Of War and Joe stand out but lately his work has been dictated by his well known money problems and not surprisingly his quality control has dropped big time. The last few years have been a conveyor belt of horrible cheap DTV releases. Then the trailer for Mandy dropped. It looked intriguing as hell. Could the finished film live up to the crazy promise shown in those 2 minutes?

Red and Mandy lead a quiet but blissful life in the woods. Red's a lumberjack and Mandy's an artist. All is well until the night Mandy runs afoul of a demon worshipping cult and Red's rage descends. He wants his love back and nothing is going to get in his way as he doles out his righteous anger. It gets bloody. Oh sweet jesus does it get bloody.

Wow. This is something else. A blazingly unhinged watch. Terrifying, traumatising, intense, surreal, hilarious. Five words that describe both the movie and Nicolas Cage's performance. If you enjoy wacky Cage you're going to love this. I adored it.....eventually. It's a crazy ride. Tigers. Gallons of blood. Black metal inspired title cards. A colour palette that makes  Suspiria look bland with music that you'll feel in your bowels. Shotgunned porn. An ancient Bill Duke. A one take vodka fuelled bathroom freakout that has to be seen to be believed. Some serious violence. The most phallic duel ever. A moment where Cage lights his fag with the burning head of his decapitated enemy is one of the milder moments. This has it all including the most violent demise of an Irish actor that I've ever seen onscreen. 

It takes a while to get there though and the first 30-40 minutes will try your patience. It's always good to take the time to build up your characters and their relationship with each other but here it moves like a snail and feels like an awful lot of padding. The bang of pretension off proceedings is strong too and at moments the film crawls so far up it's own arse that it sees daylight again. You'll be sitting there wondering where the hell all the positivity about it came from and then............well just watch it.

Cage goes full Cage here at times. He's explosive but somehow in amongst the carnage he manages to display subtlety too. Quieter moments of introspection that will take you by surprise if you've followed his career of late. I'd love to see him come back from the brink. I don't think this will be the film to do it but his work here would remind you of just how good he could be when he used to try. Andrea Riseborough as Mandy lends an ethereal presence to the earlier part of the film but she gets to kick off big time when she comes face to face with the bad guys. Her manic laughter aimed at Linus Roache's cult leader makes for a memorable moment. Roach has fun as the big bad and gets some nasty back up from Irish character actor Ned Dennehy who plays the kind of scummy sidekick you want to see dying horrifically. Spoiler - he does.

This is a trip. A big, brash and bloody B movie. It's Race With The Devil crossed with Heavy Metal by way of Dario Argento. The sort of film that never makes it to the cinema anymore. It has some of the good of 70's/80's exploitation cinema but a lot of the bad too. Director Panos Cosmatos definitely has his own style and goes full auteur here, laying it on thick. Hopefully his next film will see him paired with a more judicious editor though. Him and Cage make a fine team. Fingers crossed they work together again.