As a film lover, there is one type of
film that still hope against hope to discover.
The ‘good’ direct-to-video movie.
After watching the new collaboration between Nicolas Cage and director
Simon West “Stolen” all I can say is “The search continues.”
Cage is Will
Montgomery a master thief, we are meant to assume this since we only see him
actually pull one job which takes place at the opening twenty minutes of the
film, and he gets caught. So we have to
take everyone’s word for it that Cage is the best there is at what he does. So we catch up to him eight years later where
after being in prison so long he’s still considered the best as the cops are
following him around and a former partner played extremely over the top by Josh
Lucas decides to kidnap Will’s daughter in exchange for the money that was lost
on the eight year old job.
The film is
filled with clichés from beginning to end and the script is laughably bad, like
I said we only see Cage’s character use his supposedly incredible thieving skills
twice throughout the course of the film, mostly we are just told, one character
even says the words “Who steals from the world’s best thief.” Everything else from the cops, to the cab
drivers, to the criminals, all are reading from the action movie handbook. And not in the fun, action-packed “Expendables”
kind of way. More like the, well, like
the home video kind of way. Which is a shame seeing as how West directed the dead-on "Expendables 2".
Though there
is usually a reason a film is shot with the intention of wide release and winds
up on the direct-to-video shelves, I still get tempeted to see if it really is that
bad. I mean the last time Cage and West
got together was “Con-Air”. Unfortunately
they don’t capture the same magic here and sadly the only thing that is "Stolen" is your time.
--Robert L.
Castillo
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