Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)

November 28, 2021 1:50 PM

In the treacherous frontier city of Samurai Town, a ruthless bank robber gets sprung from jail by a wealthy warlord whose adopted granddaughter has gone missing. Strapped into a leather suit that will self-destruct in five days, the bandit sets off on a journey to find the young woman. Sion Sono directs Nicolas Cage in what the actor calls, "The wildest movie I've ever made."

Streaming in the US on Shudder.

posted by DirtyOldTown (2 comments total)

This is as bananas as it sounds, but it's less kinetic than it should be. For a movie where the main character will explode if he doesn't act fast enough, he spends a lot of time idling. And while the movie is bananas, Cage is (mostly... by his standards) restrained. Sophia Boutella isn't given room to kick ass until the final reel. Bill Moseley gives the weirdest performance of his career that isn't TCM2.

Also, the chorus history lesson in the Ghostland feels like the characters should all turn to the camera and say "SYMBOLISM!" while doing jazz hands after every line.

Worth seeing if you appreciate Sono's weird vibe. Wildly inventive and never boring, even if it doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense or hang together as well as you would hope. There are some oddly flat moments (the prison ghosts being politely asked to stand down and saying, "OK, sure.) And it's really not clear in the end how one group of ghosts trapped all of those people in the desert, what the Governor gets out of that arrangement, etc.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:21 AM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is certainly a good weird time, but after going into a deeeeeep Sono dive during the pandemic I feel like it wasn’t as off-the-wall as either Sono or Cage wanted it to be. Granted, my favorite Sono are the long works where he really gets to stretch out (Love Exposure, Forest of Love Deep Cut, Tokyo Vampire Hotel the series), but here Sono and Cage seemed to admire each other’s energy but not quite click with it.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 3:04 PM on November 30, 2021