Some years back, I made a promise to myself to see every movie Nicolas Cage has ever starred in, and I’ll be damned if I don’t make that a reality. The man’s an alluring engima on-screen, never consistent enough to call a good or bad actor but never less than confounding. While I haven’t made time yet to check out Dying of the Light or Bringing Out Your Dead or Snake Eyes, to sadly name a few, they’ll end up on my queue sometime. And so will his latest, the headline-heavy thriller The Runner, and maybe sooner than later. Because, quite frankly, this one looks like a hoot.
The general plot of this has something or another to do with Cage as an untrustworthy politician who finds his career intertwined with the 2010 BP oil spill, and works his way up through the support of his love ones and a couple others giving him overwrought lines of encouragement. In addition to Cage, Connie Nielsen, Sarah Paulson, Wendell Pierce and Peter Fonda also star in writer/director Austin Stark feature directorial debut.
Between Cage’s ever-fluctuating accent, the abrupt tonal shift in the trailer and its final shot of our shirtless lead actor looking in the mirror with face that could be read as him scared of his own reflection or surprised to see he has one at one (the actor once played a vampire, after all), I have no clue what the hell this trailer’s trying to do. Chances are, if the two-minute promo can’t figure it out the eventual film will become an even bigger mess. I can’t even predict if this will be boring Cage or crazy Cage, to be honest. But I’ll be there either way.
I love me some Cage, good and bad, and I’m ready to see what the actor can do with the BP scandal in his grasp. Move over, Mark Wahlberg. I’m not sure if this is one where the Academy Award-winning actor is putting in his best effort or phoning it in, but so long as the actor is muted down to the point of utter boredom as he was with, say, Bangkok Dangerous or Rage, I’ll probably find some amusement. Though I’ll have to wait until August 7 to do so, and so will you.
In the meantime, you can check out the trailer and poster below.
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