Arsenal

Arsenal

When he’s on his game, Nicolas Cage calls to mind Klaus Kinski, the wild-eyed actor who teamed with director Werner Herzog on such films as Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God, and whose performances were marked by an unhinged intensity that produced naked aggression one minute and violent mood swings the next. But without a strong director to rein him in or one who’s content to let him do whatever he pleases Cage loses sight of what acting is and just yowls for attention like a novice actor whose only move is turning up the volume.

In Arsenal, you can see Cage lurking in the corner. He wears a Tony Clifton bowl cut wig absurdly paired with dark sunglasses and a wide-lapel lounge singer-style jacket. It’s hard to say what kind of performance Cage is giving because director Steven C. Miller (Submerged, Marauders) often cuts him off before he can get started. Like Kinski, Cage is always stealing scenes even when he’s overacting; it’s like watching a car crash that keeps exploding anew.

Cage is easily the most inspired thing about Arsenal, a somnambulant crime drama about a straight-arrow entrepreneur trying to rescue his deadbeat brother from some sort of crime boss (Cage, naturally). But because he never gets to cut loose, Arsenal never comes alive.

Technically speaking JP (Adrian Grenier), a small-time business owner, is supposed to be the star of Arsenal. So you might reasonably expect any description of the movie to start with his character. Unfortunately for Grenier’s lackluster performance (delivered entirely through clenched teeth), we leave JP behind after one scene: We flash back to JP’s childhood when his big-brother Mikey (Johnathon Schaech) saved him from witnessing an excessively gory domestic murder by bringing JP to their neighborhood video-game arcade.

When Mikey comes to collect JP, he runs into Eddie King (Cage), a peculiar-looking mobster whose hyper-violent actions are undercut by the flesh-colored putty on the tip of his nose. Cage isn’t allowed to freak out in this scene, but his character does: Eddie smashes a man’s face with a lead pipe and baseball bat in slow motion. He threatens to steal the scene, but his breathless line delivery is muffled, and the moment passes too quickly.

Fast-forward to now: JP has to save Mikey from Eddie, who’s kidnapped Mikey and is holding him hostage for $350,000. JP can’t raise that kind of cash on short notice so he sneaks around with bent cop Sal (John Cusack) and tries to gather intelligence about who kidnapped his brother. Which is odd because we know it must be Eddie there’s no mystery here since Eddie even discusses a kidnapping scheme with Mikey before abducting him so we spend most of the movie waiting for JP to catch up. It takes him a while, so don’t worry if your mind wanders whenever Eddie’s not on screen.

To jazz up JP’s otherwise utterly suspense-free investigation Miller salts Arsenal with heaps of bloody violence; but when the rest of your movie isn’t so sleazy or alive, shots of blood spurting out of headshots or geysering out of stomach wounds just don’t pop. These action movie violent scenes cranked up till they look like they belong in some Rob Zombie project feel as though they’re from another film entirely.

Most part of “Arsenal” is just random, hyper-stylized nonsense. What do the darkened color palette and flat, Instagram style camera lenses tell us about Mikey and Eddie’s supposedly seedy world? JP’s search why are we spending so much time on it? Better yet, who thought Grenier was a strong leading man? He sighs and pouts well, but, like the rest of the creative decisions in the film, appears uninspired. Realistically speaking, though, that should be the least of my complaints about “Arsenal” it is an incredibly dull movie.

But what about Eddie? If you’re a Cage devotee (and if you’re reading this review opening weekend of “Arsenal,” I can only assume that you are), his character’s name and appearance should be strikingly familiar: he’s reprising his role from 1993′s pathetic neo-noir exercise “Deadfall,” written and directed by Nicolas Cage’s brother Christopher Coppola.

Like “Arsenal,” it has its fair share of bad ideas although to be fair to “Deadfall,” any movie with an extended cameo by Angus Scrimm sporting a steampunk claw hand can’t be all bad. But oh boy oh boy oh boy that Cage performance! It is as if he was told that his character is a drug user, and therefore felt enabled to go absolutely insane.

So why doesn’t “Arsenal,” which includes a Coppola cameo for crying out loud, let Cage take over? Is Eddie there because the filmmakers realized they didn’t want to make this movie after all or knew they didn’t have one and just started screwing around? Or were they so uninspired they could only think to reach out to one of today’s most riveting/hard to watch performers without having any idea what to do with him? The rest of “Arsenal” is dull, so why wouldn’t Nicolas Cage be? “Arsenal” will make you see red, but never on purpose.

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