Justice **

No stranger to staging well-paced crime thrillers, like The Bank Job, The Recruit and No Way Out, director Roger Donaldson is about as qualified as any to bring this gritty story of crime and revenge to the screen – all set in one of the most exciting cities in the US, New Orleans. But although most films cannot resist the seedy allure of the French Quarter – and this film is no exception in parts, Justice does try to delve into a more realistically captured but darker depiction.

Nic Cage stars as Will Gerard, a husband who enlists the services of a vigilante group, headed by its curious leader Simon (Guy Pearce), to help him settle the score after his wife, Laura (January Jones), is brutalised. However, Will gets involved way over his head and tries to get out of the deadly pact he has made. The trouble is whom can you trust?

While the film is a half-decent enough thriller with so many twists and turns it trips itself up at times, the basic thriller ingredients have been tried and tested a lot better before, so a good proportion of the film feels like a carbon-copy of others we’ve seen. Granted, the thrill for Cage fans is seeing their hero in a rather physical role, dodging traffic and hanging from underpasses that even leaves him rubbing his head (more than once, and usually in the car) in exasperation.

What is most intriguing is the film’s main idea of disenchantment in a wounded city still hurting from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, leading to self-served justice, and this gives the whole affair an empathetic but equally menacing edge. Cage is the ideal star to tap into this darker aspect.

Like Will, Cage has a crazed, risk-taking side that the New Orleans setting flatters and seems to nurture, and an increasingly erratic Cage is more than capable and watchable in this type of action role as he makes it his eccentric own. The issues come not from his portrayal, but from the complex – and sometimes irrelevant – labyrinth of subplots that Donaldson and writers feel are necessary to throw at him. With too much at play, other things naturally go unexplained.

Sadly, we only get to see a one-dimensional and frustratingly under-developed performance from Pearce, for example, with no explanation as to where his loyalties stem from – even though we understand that his character and others are designed to be as enigmatic as possible throughout to add to the intrigue. On the plus side, Jones, who normally adds the cutesy glamour to any scene, does some of her best work yet as the victim in the first half of the film, only to be sidelined in the rest as a pawn in the increasingly paranoid Cage dance with death. Still, it’s a vast improvement on her usual film roles, and one we’d quite like seeing her tackle again.

Justice is well staged at the start and has the presence to go far. It’s just the sum of its parts – like the random journalist murder subplot – don’t add up at times and make it feel somewhat disjointed. Cage fans are guaranteed a thrill at seeing him in action, with Ghost Rider elements of a mortal Blaze out to serve and protect the ‘ordinary man’ – and Cage is always satisfying in this type of ‘moral crusader’ role. It’s just a shame Donaldson’s film doesn’t fully realise that immense talent, having him running from pillar to post throughout – and making us rub our heads in anguish at times, too.

2/5 stars

By @FilmGazer

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