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Sympathy for the Devil
Fans of the 1984 cult classic The Hitcher might have a head start with 2023's Sympathy for the Devil, an overheated psychological thriller that does feature some stylish directorial flourishes and strong performances from the leads, but suffers due to a convoluted story that takes way too long to reveal exactly what's going on.
The setting is contemporary Las Vegas where we meet a man named David (billed as "The Driver) who has just pulled into a hospital parking lot in order to be with his wife who is giving birth to his second child. Before he can get out of the car, a stranger (billed as "The Passenger") gets in the back seat and forces David at gunpoint to drive him to neighboring Boulder City, but this is a ruse leading to an elaborate game of cat and mouse that leaves a whole bunch of dead bodies in its wake.
Screenwriter Luke Paradise is the main culprit here, constructing a story that comes together way too slowly and pretty much evoked one emotion from this reviewer and that was anger. We're pretty sure this poor guy David hasn't got a prayer when the passenger mentions Boulder City about a third of the way into the film and it is never mentioned again. The passenger keeps asking the driver all these questions that it's obvious no matter what the driver says. he's going to be wrong.
Then I thought about the title of the movie and thought that the Passenger might be some human form of the devil, like Daryl Van Horn in The Witches of Eastwick and that he wanted the driver's soul for some reason, but if that were the case, there would have been no need for the senseless murder of so many innocent people. That's the other thing I hated about this movie...I don't mind when movie characters die, especially if they have it coming, but most of the deaths in this movie were of innocent bystanders.
Director Yuval Adler does display real flair with a camera, with a special affinity for slow motion that helps a little bit with viewer anger and impatience but not enough. Nicolas Cage offers an over-the-top actor's studio type performance as the passenger that seemed to be a cross between his characters in Face/Off and Vampire's Kiss, but Joel Kinnaman is terrific as the driver but both actors are working with a really dumb story.
Fans of the 1984 cult classic The Hitcher might have a head start with 2023's Sympathy for the Devil, an overheated psychological thriller that does feature some stylish directorial flourishes and strong performances from the leads, but suffers due to a convoluted story that takes way too long to reveal exactly what's going on.
The setting is contemporary Las Vegas where we meet a man named David (billed as "The Driver) who has just pulled into a hospital parking lot in order to be with his wife who is giving birth to his second child. Before he can get out of the car, a stranger (billed as "The Passenger") gets in the back seat and forces David at gunpoint to drive him to neighboring Boulder City, but this is a ruse leading to an elaborate game of cat and mouse that leaves a whole bunch of dead bodies in its wake.
Screenwriter Luke Paradise is the main culprit here, constructing a story that comes together way too slowly and pretty much evoked one emotion from this reviewer and that was anger. We're pretty sure this poor guy David hasn't got a prayer when the passenger mentions Boulder City about a third of the way into the film and it is never mentioned again. The passenger keeps asking the driver all these questions that it's obvious no matter what the driver says. he's going to be wrong.
Then I thought about the title of the movie and thought that the Passenger might be some human form of the devil, like Daryl Van Horn in The Witches of Eastwick and that he wanted the driver's soul for some reason, but if that were the case, there would have been no need for the senseless murder of so many innocent people. That's the other thing I hated about this movie...I don't mind when movie characters die, especially if they have it coming, but most of the deaths in this movie were of innocent bystanders.
Director Yuval Adler does display real flair with a camera, with a special affinity for slow motion that helps a little bit with viewer anger and impatience but not enough. Nicolas Cage offers an over-the-top actor's studio type performance as the passenger that seemed to be a cross between his characters in Face/Off and Vampire's Kiss, but Joel Kinnaman is terrific as the driver but both actors are working with a really dumb story.