Rent Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)

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.

What.On.Earth - Prisoners of the Ghostland review by JD

I usually enjoy watching N.Cage. But this was pushing it. The film is just weird and doesnt do anything to make the weird feel justified.

Infact take Cage out of it and your probably looking at one of the worst films ever made.

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.

Weird & Awful - Prisoners of the Ghostland review by GI

The director, Sion Sono, names Wild At Heart (1990) as a key influence for this weird post apocalyptic fantasy and East/West hybrid film. I'm guessing that's all about Nicolas Cage because I saw nothing in in this that remotely made me think of David Lynch's film. This is more a daft Escape From New York (1981) and Mad Max series rip off and frankly it's all style, and little of that, over substance. Cage is a criminal in this strange land of samurai warriors and cowboys. He's nameless to give him an extra moody edge, as if he needs it! He's released from jail by the corrupt leader of 'Samurai Town' who fits him into a leather suit primed to explode in five days unless he returns from Ghostland with a missing woman (Sofia Boutella). So off he trots to get her. This cues over rehearsed fight scenes, some blood fountains, some disfigured crazies, Cage can even keep Kung Fu up just after blowing one of his own testicles off and pretty dull it all is too. It's certainly colourful and follows a typical and predictable B movie story arc that drags a good twenty minutes too long. One of Cage's throwaways.