We Watched the Nicolas Cage Movie He Doesn't Want You to See

Nicolas Cage, once an A-list dramatic actor, has spent the last half-decade starring in mostly insane, campy, and awful movies. His new film, Dying of the Light — which arrived on VOD over the weekend, following a contentious behind-the-scenes battle —is an attempt to fuse his dramatic brooding with his scene-chewing tendencies. Somehow, the final result is mere mediocrity.

It’s hard to know exactly who to blame for this. The film was written, directed, and then disowned by Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader. The filmmaker has alleged that the just-released released CIA thriller — which stars Cage alongside Anton Yelchin and Alexander Karim — was taken away from him by distributor Lionsgate, which he claims locked him out of the editing room and re-cut his final product.

Schrader, Cage, Yelchin and executive producer Nicolas Winding Refn protested online, and Schrader says he would prefer that you not watch the bastardized final product.

We watched it anyway. And came away more intrigued by the parallels between the real-life participants and their characters than by anything that really happens on screen.

Cage stars as Evan Lake, a CIA agent who, when the film opens, is in the process of having the tar beaten out of him by an Islamic militant (Karim) of an unnamed terrorist network. A bunch of special forces swoop in to save him, and we fast-forward 22 years later to find Lake in the sunset of an accomplished career that has been recognized with just about every medal that the agency offers.

The CIA, however, has sidelined him and reappointed him as a desk jockey, partly because they think he’s over the hill, and partly because hes become increasingly volatile. This movie is full of Cage-Rage, as the actor is frequently fuming and screaming at others: He has values, he loudly proclaims, and it’s not his fault the agency is in such hot water. In one epic spiel, he castigates the head of the CIA, blaming the organization for, well, everything that’s gone wrong in the last three or four decades:

“You f—ked this up, like you f—ked up everything else. You f—ked Iran Contra, You f—ked up Ames, you f—ked up 9/11, you f—ked up, WMD, you f—ked up Afghanistan, you f—ked up Iraq, you f—ked up Bengazi! You’re the latest in a long line of f—k-ups who turned this into a cesspool of politics and special interests on behalf of the weapons makers and surveillance industry, who get richer while we get weaker.”

Schrader, who was celebrated in the ’70s and ’80s for writing adult dramas like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ, has in recent years resorted to Kickstarting a micro-budget indie co-starring Lindsay Lohan and a porn star. His scrounging for funds and respect has come amid the massive shift in Hollywood, which has become almost entirely reliant on big-budget tentpole franchises, forsaking the kind of smart projects that made Schrader a name we still recognize today.

It is not a far leap to say that Schrader was writing a CIA-agent version of himself, a smart link to the past, when certain endeavors — be they covert missions or movie productions — were done for noble reasons. It’s also not hard to understand why Cage, who soared in the ’90s and early 2000s before becoming mostly a baffling butt of internet jokes, might have been attracted to playing a once-promising power player in need of redemption.

To up the drama in his film, Schrader has given his lead a very loud ticking clock. Early on, Lake finds out he’s suffering from frontotemporal dementia, which is basically an aggressive version of Alzheimer’s. He knows his time is limited, because he’s already feeling the early effects of the disease, including mood swings and anger spikes, which — as sad as it may be — is also a perfect device to let Cage be Cage, with plenty of big, broad moments.

Around the time of Evans’ diagnosis, he learns that the man who tortured him, Mohammad Benir, is still alive, as he always suspected. No one at the CIA would ever believe him, but Lake had dreamed of killing him for the last 22 years, and now he wants his revenge.

The terrorist is hardly a threat at this point, and is in fact deathly ill. Why bother going through the trouble to kill a dying man, Evans’ CIA colleagues ask. Evans has an easy answer: Because he has principles, as well as some unfinished business!

And so, along with a young analyst played by Yelchin, Evans heads to Romania and then Nigeria, where the old terrorist is undergoing experimental medical treatment. After all these years, he’s going to get his revenge, getting to the bedside of the terrorist by disguising himself as a doctor. He’ll give the guy a taste of his own medicine, alright.

One of the stranger moments comes when Lake meets up with a contact in Turkey, who helps set him up with the doctor that he will later impersonate in order to reach Benir’s secret hideout. This contact just so happens to be a former flame of Lake’s; apparently, he was quite the charmer before his disease turned him into an angry, obsessive revenge monster.

Again, Schrader’s fingerprints are all over this story, even if the final edit wasn’t his. What’s interesting, however, is that the film never quite convinces the audience that Evans isn’t going on a stupid folly of a mission, propelled by bitterness and an obsession with the past rather than a pursuit of real justice.

Dying of the Light isn’t terrible, despite its 7 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes; it’s just sort of boring. My TV is on my dresser at home, and I organized my sock drawer during the last 25 minutes of the film. It was actually the perfect activity for it; I was able to pay attention to the film while also keeping my mind clear enough to match a horrible array of stray dress socks.

We’ll never know what the movie could have been like had Schrader had been allowed to present his cut. Maybe there are some great action scenes and a deeper justification for the adventure, beyond ego and the fact that it’s not a movie without it. Either way, the end result doesn’t bode well for Schrader, but it will probably not hurt Cage at all. People will always love him — even if, nowadays, it’s a misguided love, one undertaken solely for ironic reasons.

On the bright side, Dying of the Light does have its quiet, character-focused moments, which reminds a viewer of Joe, one of his better recent performances, in part because he’s not acting like an insane person the entire time. Joe, a drama directed by David Gordon Green, came out earlier this year and really proved that Cage is still a viable dramatic actor; unfortunately, few people saw it.

If Paul Schrader has his way — and he probably will — even fewer will see Dying of the Light. What should have been a noisy, roaring comeback for both men is instead simply a long, quiet sigh of a movie.