Aug 16: Seeking Justice

"After his wife is assaulted, a husband enlists the services of a vigilante group to help him settle the score. Then he discovers they want a 'favor' from him in return."

Directed by: Roger Donaldson, Rated: R, 105 minutes

As many of you know, I usually have a banner size poster for the beginning of each review, but clearly, that poster is too damn good to not show off. Cage. Is. A. Gun. The man is clearly going places with his career and I, for one, am incredibly excited. Until he actually gets back to those places, however, we're left with shit like Seeking Justice, a film so stupid and poorly cast you can't help but seek your own justice and turn the movie off. But since this is Cage Week and all, I had to sit through the entire film. The things I do for this blog...

PA-KAWWWWWWW

Seeking Justice follows Will Gerard (Cage), a high school English teacher (yes, I'd sit in that class, yes I'd enjoy the f**k out of it) whose wife (January Jones) is raped one day after her cello recital. I may not wish rape on anyone in the world, but when bitchy January Jones gets slapped around a bit, I'm perfectly okay with that. Anyway, after she's raped, Will is approached by the mysterious Simon (Guy Pearce). Simon offers Will a way to get back at the rapist and makes a deal with him. Simon will "take care" of the bad man and Cage will owe him a "favor" down the road. I only put favor in quotations because the IMDB synopsis does the same and alludes to the idea that something kinky is going to happen. Unfortunately (?), nothing of the naughty kind transpires. Six months after Simon murders the rapist, he calls up Will and sends him on multiple errands, following people and mailing letters to Santa. As it turns out, Simon is part of a "secret organization" that kills the bad guys and passes it on. If the organization does a favor for you, you owe them a life. Of course, Cage being the nice guy he is, refuses to kill his target and everything spirals out of control. Simon gets pissed, tracks down Cage, and puts every part of his life in danger until he does what he's told. 

Or else it gets the hose again. 

As you can imagine, there's very little to like about Seeking Justice. I'll admit, the idea of the organization doing what it does is kind of cool. But, the film fails to execute its rather unorthodox methods of doing things and drags out each little chore until it's completely uninteresting. There's a moment in the film when Cage turns the tables on Simon and makes him follow a list of things to do. At a monster truck rally, Cage tells Simon to go into the concourse, then go to the bathroom and take a leak, then order a hot dog. After these couple little tasks, Cage simply walks up to him and begins a conversation. I am unsure if the chores handed out were to get back at Simon for making Cage run around earlier, or if the movie just felt like dragging itself out a few minutes longer because "F**k you, it's Nicolas Cage". It's also worth noting that the casting of January Jones as Cage's wife was not only one of the worst casting decisions of all time, but a sad reminder that the horrible woman continually finds work. Her performance is so phoned in and out of place, she actually makes Cage look like Laurence Olivier. As for Pearce, he's completely out of place in the movie and his talent is wasted. He deserves much better than this piece of crap.

The horror... 

I would highly recommend staying away from Seeking Justice. The film is all kinds of bad. The movie does have its fleeting moments of decency but they are almost immediately washed away with a terrible script and horrible acting. Seeking Justice is most certainly worthy of the fact it was a straight to DVD release and had it not been for the "A-List" cast, this movie would have immediately fallen into the oblivion of bargain bins. With a laughable script, more holes in the plot than a donut shop, and a cast so piss-poor, Seeking Justice is nothing to seek out... Yep, ending it with a pun. 

The Bad:

a script that has no direction and simply drags on when it can't figure out what to do next

The Ugly:

a cast so stupid you can't help but wonder how much better it would be with no name D-listers

The Cage:

out of place, strung along, with a goatee

Overall: 3.0/10

or 

One and a Half Cages out of Five

Trailer:

As a side note, Seeking Justice features an abundance of TV actors, including Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter), January Jones (Mad Men), IronE Singleton (The Walking Dead), Harold Perrineau (LOST), and Xander Berkeley (24). I highly doubt this was just coincidence.