Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Seeking Justice (2011) - Review

Seeking Justice is an action/thriller starring Nic Cage, January Jones, Guy Pearce, and Harold Perrineau. Nic Cage plays Will Gerard, a high school English teacher who tries his best to mentor hostile students and has a strong bond with his coworker Jimmy (Perrineau). His wife, Laura (Jones), a string musician gets sexually assaulted one night after practice and leaves Will to make a choice given to him by a stranger, Simon (Pearce), who promises that he has the resources to catch and make the rapist pay for his crimes. When Simon comes to collect on his favor for helping Will, Will becomes involved in a conspiracy involving himself in increasingly dangerous situations seeking justice for other individuals. 

I enjoyed this movie. The story is increasingly farfetched, but the tension and paranoia that it builds is done fantastically. As the movie progresses, Will finds himself not being able to trust anybody as he is trying to absolve himself of the allegations of murder and getting to the core of what this organization is, and who is all involved. I didn't feel that many of the twists were contrived- as the mystery unfolded, the clues were doled out almost painfully slow but only fuels the desire even more fierce for everything to unravel. The pace at which the movie isolated from paranoia, first from Laura after her assault, then from Will after he is asked to murder who he thinks is a paedophile, but turns out to be a journalist. I applaud the movie's resisting of temptation to wrap up their story in a nice little package - the cast, including Pearce and Perrineau, do a wonderful job at showing just how fragile trust and loyalty is in the face of adversity and having to make difficult choices. I remember liking this movie around the time it came out, and I don't think that feeling has changed much. I wouldn't, however, say that this movie is a shining star in Cage's pantheon, like Face/Off and Moonstruck but I do recommend this movie for anyone interested to watch - the only thing I would warn against is the atrocious goatee sported by Cage the entire 105 minute runtime.

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