Rent Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)

A really mixed bag for me. Not great by any means, but definitely engaging with Cage on crazy form - Prisoners of the Ghostland review by TB

The best thing I can say about this film is that is has a very large number of genuinely inspired visual flourishes. The cinematography and colour palette, alongside other zany moments, really give the film a shot in the arm and keep the momentum going.

As much as I wanted this film to be more, sadly the rest of it is extremely schlocky. The world the film creates is very uneven, with random and not always good choices. It also, for all its good points, does sometimes get lost and stretch the patience. But this is a solid 3 star film.

Finally, this film contains another memorable Cage performance, part freak-out, part profound, part crazy. But again, he is never anything less than committed, never winking at the audience or coasting through. We are very lucky to have Cage as an actor working today, and I'll always be grateful that he takes the chances that he does, even if not all of his attempts pay off

Prisoners of the Ghostland by VE - Prisoners of the Ghostland review by VE

What a load of rubbish it didn’t really qualify a 1 star.  Such a ridiculous plot and who in their right mind thought it would be worth turning into a film to watch! 

Rubbish - Prisoners of the Ghostland review by PM

Waste of time to watch, waste of energy to put that into a DVD, even waste of information of every bit of it.

Perfect to torture anybody who already saw more than one movie.

Sad Face - Prisoners of the Ghostland review by JR

Imagine a movie made by an enthusiastic 16 year old. Conflicted about which genre for the first movie, but wants it to be cool, maybe a bit like Kill Bill!

That's basically what you've got here, and I assume Nick Cage is a distant relation or something because I don't really understand how he got involved otherwise. It's trying so hard to be cool, and funny and stylish, but unfortunately it's a really bad disjointed mess with 90's cars mixed in with Japanese samurai and American cowboy theming. Hell chuck in some futuristic sci-fi tech for good measure as well. I can kind of see what they were going for but it just doesn't work.

Watch and wonder - Prisoners of the Ghostland review by Alphaville

Sion Sono’s first English-language film is even more unclassifiable than his previous work. With explosives attached to his privates, gangster Nick Cage sets off on his push-bike to rescue a woman from the land of no escape. Not that the plot matters as it barely hangs together from one scene to the next. What matters is the epic scale, surreal visuals and wild confrontations. For example, one monumental set has hordes of people trying to stop the hands moving on a giant clock to stop the universe exploding. You’ll either give up on it all after a few minutes or sit open-mouthed in wonderment. The final guns and swords climax, played out to a dramatic orchestral score, is a tour de force of operatic grandeur. It’s a divisive film not without many faults, but a Sion Sono movie is always an event worth catching.