Rage

MOVIE #1,850 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 07.25.24 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 68 There is actually a section on Nicolas Cage’s Wikipedia titled “2012–2017: Career setbacks” and this film, Rage — directed by Spanish filmmaker Paco Cabezas, who has mostly worked in TV but also directed the 2015 Anna Kendrick-Sam Rockwell action romcom vehicle, Mr. Right — is probably Exhibit 1A for said fallow period. Right from the get-go this looks like one of the cheapest Cage movies yet…

So Cage, looking suave with some unnaturally dark hair, picks up his daughter. Then he goes to the local pub to plan her Sweet 16 party with his boys, as one does…


There is an uncanny digital sheen here that makes everything look like it was shot in front of a green screen. It looks horrible!

Cage then meets the mayor for the groundbreaking of a community center. He's some bigwig real estate dude. Back at home, Cage and his young second wife get ready for a dinner party with some powerful people. His daughter is staying home alone with a couple of dudes, and Cage grills one of ‘em…


Cage's daughter and the bros watch the original Night of the Living Dead before we cut to Detective Danny Glover interrupting the adults’ dinner party. We get a flashback of what happened back at the house…


The daughter has been kidnapped! Detective DG alludes to some sketchy past for Cage. He was either a cop or a criminal, or maybe both? Well, they answer that immediately as we see Cage violently steal a car in a flashback. He then speeds off to one of his daughter's friend's house, on the bad side of town because it's by a highway overpass, which we see via green screen background…


Cage tells the boy a scary story from his “rage” days…


Cage then meets with the Sweet 16 planning committee at a building site to discuss his vigilante plan in front of some more green screens. This dialogue is something…


The committee boys barge into a drug den and torture a couple of junkies for information. These guys aren't fucking around…


Shocking those severely addicted homeless people didn't know anything about the highly orchestrated home invasion, huh?

Their tough guy tactics are all for naught though, as they find his daughter's dead body in the woods. A sad end to the story but I'm sure Cage will leave it at that.

We cut to the funeral and the green screens are getting worse and more unnecessary as he meets a wheelchair-bound Peter Stormare…


Some of that actually seems like it was shot in reality but I honestly can't tell anymore. It's distracting how bad it looks, that's for sure.

Anyway, we learn that Cage was involved with the Russian mob (and Irish mob? who effing knows) but they let him out. Peter Stormare implores Cage to just let this go because he got out of the business without any repercussions. Although, his daughter being murdered seems like a pretty big repercussion even if it’s this many years later, no?

Cage meets with the committee boys and the violent carjacking flashback from before continues. We see Cage's real life son, Weston, in the clip…


Detective DG learns the gun that killed the girl is linked to the Russian mob. No shit. The committee boys are also piecing together what was clearly evident from the flashback/allusions. This is really a horrible screenplay. A lot of telling after the showing. And if you can believe it, this same information is relayed a THIRD time to Cage from one of the boys. Why? Such bad storytelling.

Cage and the committee boys bully their way into a private Russian card game and fuck it up…


They're not fucking around! Their next lead takes them to a strip club in the middle of the day. Cage recognizes the dude's tattoo from the carjacking years ago and they shoot him and chase him through a bunch of backyards and eventually onto an abandoned warehouse roof. I love when Cage's voice gets like this…


There's that Cage Rage (I mean, it's right in the title so it had to be coming). Detective DG meets Cage at a diner to talk some sense into him. This is a pretty nothing role for Glover but he's giving it his all…


Cage ain't hearing that shit. Ah well, you tried detective DG!

We then cut to Cage and crew breaking into another drug den and violently killing people. I'm starting to think Danny Glover is right here. They murder so many people. DG and the cops show up to make sense of the crime scene.

Danny Glover in 2014’s Rage actually says the line “he had a rap sheet as long as my dick.” I had to watch so many movies to finally hear that. I feel blessed…


The head of the Russian mob finally gets word of all this violence and he's not pleased. He sends his men to the Sweet 16 party planning committee pub and they beat the shit out of Cage’s friend. While rushing to help him, Cage gets into a pretty intense car chase and I honestly didn't think this film had the budget for this (even if it still looks bad!)…


Detective DG still has faith in Cage (for some reason!) and he lets him go. Meanwhile, his buddy is getting tortured by the mob boss. Cage then visits the other nondescript friend and yells at him for screwing a stripper in an auto garage instead of checking his phone to help out with the revenge scenario, etc. He continues to grill this guy and he starts to get suspicious…


RIP Danny. Such a memorable character, gone far too soon

The mobsters kill the other dude too. And the boss goes to visit Peter Stormare. They end up killing him in his wheelchair. I never really got what was going on with his character anyway, so no big loss. The crazy thing is we genuinely have no idea who killed his daughter and there’s only about fifteen minutes left. Then, out of the effing blue, her two high school dude friends show up again and we get the answer. It is very, very stupid…


Whoopsie daisy for starting that mob war! Cage calls his wife and waits for the thugs to show up and blow him away. He doesn't try to fight back. The credits roll on top of Danny Glover and the cops going over the Cage household crime scene.

This one was as unmemorable as it gets. The 11th hour plot twist wants to be seen as clever but it is just so painfully random and dull. It's the kind of bad idea that should have been dropped immediately. But they went ahead and made a feature film out of it instead.



THE VERDICT: 4 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.

Next up on The Year of Cage we'll be featuring a very special double feature of two 2024 films that were just recently released: Arcadian and Longlegs, the latter of which I'll be seeing in the theaters so won't be doing the standard video plot recap review.

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Rage, titled Tokarev in most of Europe and Australia, is a 2014 American action crime thriller film directed by Paco Cabezas and written by Jim Agnew and Sean Keller. The film stars Nicolas Cage, Rachel Nichols, Peter Stormare, Danny Glover, Max Ryan, Judd Lormand and Pasha D. Lychnikoff. It was released on May 9, 2014.