Review of Seeking Justice (2011) by Robert H — 08 Feb 2014

Nicolas Cage gives a decent performance in an utterly preposterous, but moderately entertaining, suspense thriller. In SEEKING JUSTICE, Nicolas Cage plays a high school English teacher whose wife is raped.

He is then approached by a mysterious man named Simon (Guy Pearce) who offers to have the rapist "taken care of," in exchange for Cage to do a favor for him in the future. What he doesn't find out until later is, that Simon (and a lot of other people) are part of a secretive group which doles out vigilante justice.

Cage has qualms about fulfilling his "favor" and ends up being targeted. What unfolds is actually fairly engaging despite being completely convoluted. There is real tension as Will (Cage's character) and his wife Laura (January Jones) try to evade the group.

The secretive nature of the group also means that they don't always know who to trust. The movie is capably directed by Roger Donaldson, and the action sequences are adequately shot. There's also a car chase scene which wasn't too bad.

Scoring wasn't too memorable, although it wasn't annoying. The biggest weakness is obviously the premise, coupled with the writing. There are quite a few supporting characters, and none of them are really fleshed out that well.

However, once you get into the meat of the story you probably won't notice. It's only when holding the movie up to close scrutiny that it begins to fall apart. This was one of three movies that Nicolas Cage released in 2012, and it's easily the best one, surpassing the abysmal GHOST RIDER 2 and STOLEN.

Overall, it's not a bad rental as long as you're not expecting a masterpiece.