'Prisoners Of The Ghostland': No Brains, But Big TesticaaAARRRGHLs [Sundance Review]

So Nic Cage is a bank robber sprung, naked except for a sumo-nappy, from a lengthy stint in jail by the white-hatted, black-hearted Governor (Bill Moseley) of a fake Japanese cowboy town populated exclusively by caged Geisha prostitutes, one of the favorites of whom, Bernice (Sofia Boutella, being bafflingly good again despite the material) recently escaped, so The Governor straps Cage into a leather suit rigged with explosives on the arms, neck and testicles that are primed to explode if they detect his intention to physically harm – or get turned on by – “a helpless woman,” and sends him off into a neighboring irradiated wasteland where Time doesn’t work properly and which is populated by Mad Max-style bandits, itinerant preachers, downtrodden desperadoes, filthy-faced ragamuffin children and people who have been rendered mute and partially encased in fragments of mannequin bodies, with three days to locate Bernice and five to bring her back before his suit, to which the Governor carries the key on a chain around his neck, explodes and kills him, (I know you’re absolutely longing for a period by now; imagine how it feels to watch this thing), a deal to which Cage tacitly agrees – what choice has he? – initially refusing the car he’s offered in favor of a small girl’s bike on which he rides awkwardly out of town which causes one onlooker from the chaotic crowd to exclaim “he’s so cool!” before the Governor’s samurai henchman Yasujiro (Tak Sakaguchi) catches up to him in the vehicle and Cage drives off, immediately running aground when a crew of violent convicts turned radioactive mutants who may or may not be able to materialize and dematerialize at will, block the road ahead,  causing an accident from which Cage is rescued by a scavenger clan called the Rat Family and brought before the de facto leaders of The Ghostland, which is where, remarkably, he finds Bernice and eventually successfully convinces her to leave with him, only for her hotness to cause him to get an erection which his suit detects and blows one of his balls off. 

This is Sion Sono‘s “Prisoners of the Ghostland.” It’s not very good except sometimes when it’s fantastic. 

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For those not aware of Sion Sono, the Japanese director of such cult hits as “Tokyo Tribe,” “Why Don’t You Play in Hell,” and the 4-hour tribute to the art of the upskirt that was “Love Exposure,” ‘Prisoners’ is going to be absolutely incomprehensible for the first third or so, during which Sono cycles through about 16 different filming styles that zip erratically between time frames and characters we’ve not yet been introduced to. After that, the surprise might be that as nonsensical as it all is, Sono does actually attempt to account for a single underlying mythology, which is mostly delivered by a greek-chorus troupe of dancers who chantingly translate the storytelling of their Mandarin-speaking female priestess/leader and fill us in on the whole radioactive-waste/convict transport “explanation” of The Ghostland.  I confess I didn’t quite catch the gist of the time thing – given the rapidity with which exposition is delivered here, maybe I blinked – so why the Ghostlanders are slaves to a massive clock and why The Governor frequently declares himself to be the master of Time I’m not completely sure. I hope it’s not important (lol nothing here is important).

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For those who are fans of Sono’s back catalog, the collision between Japan’s most coherence-averse schlock auteur and Nicolas Cage, Hollywood’s most sense-defying line reader seems like the stuff of multiple psychedelic night-ejaculations. In truth, it’s actually a bit of a waste, as the film is so overloaded already that there’s not that much for Cage to do except glower and fight not terribly well (he’s definitely shown up in that department by the magnetic Sakaguchi’s sword-wielding bodyguard, who, without a word, nor a shred of consistent characterization, provides the film, especially its pretty great climactic showdown battle, with its coolest fights).

Here, Cage’s turn is an odd half-measure in a film with no half-measures, with the inveterate scenery-chewer given maybe six opportunities to reeeallly bug his eyes out, or pretend-kung fu chop someone out of nowhere, or snigger inexplicably mid-syllable. The rest of the time, he’s just a guy in a leather suit on which only one of the glowing orbs of the testicle-bombs still functions, which causes the Wallflowers’One Headlight” to keep playing on repeat in one’s head. (Maybe that won’t happen to you, I don’t know, I watched this at 5am.) But shit’s all about the memes these days, right, and Cage does get to deliver at least one iconic moment that you can already see working as a text-on-picture gif, when he climbs atop the Ghostland steps and bellows “If you’d told me three days ago I’d be standing here with one arm and one testicaaAARRRGHL….” It’s destined to replace “Friends, Romans, countrymen…” as an all-timer rallying-cry speech-opener. 

You do have to admire the inventiveness of Sono’s vision, and his odd commitment to delivering on every weird pact he makes with the audience, no matter how throwaway it seems. The exploding suit is a case in point, much like Chekov’s gun, if you’re going to put a bomb on Nic Cage’s balls in Act I, you better be sure it goes off by Act III, and actually, Sono pays off much sooner than that. And let’s not forget the irrational, unnecessary beauty of Sohei Tanikawa‘s cinematography which provides apocalyptic sunsets, geishatown snowstorms,  hallucinatory nightmare sequences, archly theatrical set pieces, and Day-Glo armed-robbery scenes, any one of which could be the centerpiece of any one of about ten different movies. 

But it is also, without question, exhausting, to have this much visual noise and clamor attached to this little sense or emotion. I’m not saying I don’t want to watch Nic Cage’s groin explode and then have him hop backward holding his bloodied left testis up and fainting, but it would be nice to have a little connection to Cage’s character – or to his balls – and so to place his monotesticularity in appropriately tragic perspective. In lieu of that, we get a thinly sketched revenge/liberation plot which is actually far better sold by Boutella and the Governor’s other “granddaughter” (Yuzuka Nakaya), while Cage gets to face down his literal demons (the ghosts of people whose deaths he feels responsible for) and his erstwhile partner turned irradiated mutant leader Psycho (played by Nick Cassavetes – “Face/Off” reunion!). It feels like suddenly sentimental slim pickings, after all that enthusiastically incoherent violence that we should end up with Cage as a sort of protective guardian angel figure to the two girls, and a messiah for the wasteland-dwellers, but then, maybe the real prisoners of the ghostland were the friends we made along the way. [B]

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