MOVIE: Arsenal
STARRING: Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Adrian Grenier, Johnathon Schaech, Megan Leonard, Lydia Hull
RELEASE DATE: January 6th, 2017
WHERE TO WATCH: VOD (HBOMax, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Apple TV)
By Justin Pomerville (2 Broke Geeks)
Eddie King (Nicolas Cage) in Arsenal.
Oh, look at that! We are back to the “straight-to-dvd” section of Nic Cage’s catalog. We are here with 2017’s Arsenal. This film is one of the few I have seen where Cage plays the villain. Not only does he play the villain, but his character actually first appears in an earlier Cage film called, Deadfall (which gives you a hint on next week’s film).
Most of these straight-to-home video reviews will probably be shorter reviews because in researching, they just don’t have much going on except for the bombardment of not so pleasant reviews. In this case, Arsenal does fall into the category of a bad film. But how bad is it? The plot is as follows: JP (played by Adrian Grenier) is a wealthy construction worker whose deadbeat older brother, Mikey (played by Johnathon Schaech), gets kidnapped and held for ransom by a sort-of mobster, Eddie King (played by Cage). JP now must save his brother and get rid of Eddie before others get hurt.
JP (Adrian Grenier) and Mickey (Johnathon Schaech) in Arsenal.
This is a very typical action thriller film that was very predictable. The script is beyond mediocre, especially with character building, or even structure for that matter. The only story that needed to be told was “how far will you go to save your brother” and although that criteria was met, it felt lackluster. Nothing felt like it had any real stakes. The fight scenes were nothing to write home about and the gun fight at the end of the film is probably the funniest thing with the usage of slow-motion bullets. It includes a slow-motion shot of a guy getting hit in the testicles with shotgun rounds. Yes, that was a scene that made it into this film.
Eddie King (Nicolas Cage) in Arsenal.
But of course, this whole review page is about Nic Cage’s performance right? His role, albeit being the main antagonist, had very little to do with this film. With the time he did have, he pulled out as much screaming at random times as he could manage. Honestly, his performance fell on deaf ears because I could not stop looking at the hilarious looking prosthetic nose he had. I know I pick these films at random, but next week is going to be Deadfall because I need to know if Cage’s character does more in that film because this was just awful. It lands in the middle of “Hot Mess” on the Nic Gauge.
