Sympathy for the Devil, 2023.
Directed by Yuval Adler.
Starring Nicolas Cage, Joel Kinnaman, Kaiwi Lyman, Burns Burns, Cameron Lee Price, Rich Hopkins, Alexis Zollicoffer, Oliver McCallum, and Nancy Goode.
SYNOPSIS:
After being forced to drive a mysterious passenger at gunpoint, a man finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse where it becomes clear that not everything is as it seems.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Sympathy for the Devil wouldn’t exist.
In Sympathy for the Devil, Nicolas Cage playing up his typical low-budget limited theatrical release/straight-to-VOD eccentricities is the wrong choice for the material. The all-time great (who seems to do one terrific movie a year mixed in with several flaming bags of crap) is decked out in a red suit with matching dyed hair. Loaded with an obnoxious Brooklyn accent (that comes and goes as Nicolas Cage shouts and showboats his way through the performance), this mysterious character surprises Joel Kinnaman’s The Driver by getting into his backseat and pulling out a gun as he pulls into a hospital parking garage with noticeably minimal urgency consider his wife, who has suffered childbirth complications in the past despite the two already having one young boy, is in labor.
Dubbed The Passenger, the stranger forces The Driver to exit the hospital and drive casually, with no real information regarding his intentions. He is convinced that whatever clichéd family sob story The Driver attempts to give will be phony, and given the specificity of the character’s behavior during the introduction, there is reason to suspect that something fishy is up. Director Yuval Adler and screenwriter Luke Paradise are doing the classic “address the clichés to appear subversive” bit to little effect. Still, there is some intrigue about what this man wants with a sketchy but otherwise decent work-obsessive family man arriving at the hospital to be with his wife during childbirth.
The filmmakers proceed to practically go nowhere with this, spending nearly 30 minutes inside the car talking in circles, before the story settles into an extended sequence at a roadhouse diner. Since the answers here are disappointingly generic and easy to catch on to, Nicolas Cage, who I admire for wanting to put a memorable spin on this character, is tasked with serving as a distraction by going big and loud as a psychopath terrorizing The Driver and everyone else in the diner. There is certainly material here that would slide right into those Nicolas Cage mental breakdown montages, but it also feels uninspired, routine, and embarrassing. It’s no longer surprising or effective. It also doesn’t fit the dramatic heft the narrative is aiming for.
If this film contained a more subdued Nicolas Cage performance without the cringe red-aesthetics and devil angle (I sincerely hope the filmmakers don’t actually think the title is clever), there might have been something worth recommending here since there are numerous small details in the opening about The Driver that mildly pay off across the running time. It would still be tropey and familiar, but a slightly more serious turn from Nicolas Cage, or simply not doing whatever the hell he is doing here would have benefited the story.
Then again, the story is so basic it also reaches a point where Nicolas Cage is freaking out and gunning down diner patrons as an excuse for an admittedly successful attempt at suspense. That’s also a shame because Sympathy for the Devil is well-shot, with solid work from Joel Kinnaman as a character equally suspicious as the man threatening him at gunpoint. The filmmakers never find a reason for us to care about either of these two as it lumbers toward an absurd finale that’s plain dumb. You see the card trick coming, and it certainly could have worked regardless, but the material is far too lousy and laughable to make any of it work.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
Originally published September 9, 2023. Updated September 10, 2023.
