Grand Isle (2019) Review

Grand Isle is an action/thriller starring Nic Cage, KaDee Strickland, Luke Benward, and Kelsey Grammer. A new father, Buddy (Benward) is down on his luck to find a job to provide for his family. He is offered a fairly lucrative contracting job just outside of  NOLA to fix a stretch of fence before a hurricane comes in. The owners of the house are Walt (Cage) and Fancy (Strickland) a couple that are in a toxic marriage. Walt is a Vietnam war veteran who can't seem to get over the terms of his dismissal from the Marines, and Fancy is a woman who is hung up on building a family despite her body's inability to conceive a child. Caught in the middle of the hurricane, Buddy must survive the night at the couple's house while Fancy tries to seduce him and Walt is antagonistic for a variety of motives. Detective Jones (Grammer) is a hard-boiled interrogator who is trying to piece together why Buddy murdered an individual despite Buddy's pleas of innocence.

I started watching this movie with very low expectations. I had not heard of this movie until I was scraping data for my checklist, and that threw up a red flag for teh quality of the movie I was going into blindly. I found myself surprised about the structure of the story and how it would tie together near the end; at some point, I had forgotten about the A-plot of Buddy being interrogated. The story was presented as a whole block of flashback with no voiceover, allowing the audience to be engrossed into this young man's story of the harrowing night before. The acting was also good in a technical sense: the characters' motivations were clear from the performances and nothing on the surface of being inconsistent was actually lacking. The couple, Walt and Fancy, were introduced as toxic or unstable - individually as well as being paired together. Walt is the perfect character for Cage to use as an outlet for his famous zaniness - a jealous, volatile, disabled vet trying to live up to the glory days he never had. The only reservation I had after the movie had ended was that I was being left to want for more. Once the interrogation ends, there is no cat and mouse to conclude the movie. There is no suspense in the "Will they or will they not believe Buddy" and there is no suspense as to the fate of Walt and Fancy - the movie ends twice, essentially, and became burdensome to watch after the first conclusion, with almost 10 minutes or so left to wrap up any loose ends for the second ending. I was pleasantly surprised with the movie and am glad that I watched it. I can't recommend that someone go out of their way to watch Grand Isle, but it was more pleasant for me to watch than it had initially let on.