X
- 2014
- R
- The Film Arcade
- 1 h 34 m
- 2014
- R
- The Film Arcade
- 1 h 34 m
Summary Evan Lake (Nicolas Cage), a veteran CIA agent, has been ordered to retire. But when his protégé (Anton Yelchin) uncovers evidence that Lake's nemesis, the terrorist Banir (Alexander Karim), has resurfaced, Lake goes rogue, embarking on a perilous, intercontinental mission to eliminate his sworn enemy.
Directed By: Paul Schrader
Written By: Paul Schrader
- 2014
- R
- The Film Arcade
- 1 h 34 m
- 2014
- R
- The Film Arcade
- 1 h 34 m
Dying of the Light
31
3.1
Where to Watch
Summary Evan Lake (Nicolas Cage), a veteran CIA agent, has been ordered to retire. But when his protégé (Anton Yelchin) uncovers evidence that Lake's nemesis, the terrorist Banir (Alexander Karim), has resurfaced, Lake goes rogue, embarking on a perilous, intercontinental mission to eliminate his sworn enemy.
Directed By: Paul Schrader
Written By: Paul Schrader
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 12 Critic Reviews
31
0% Positive
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
75% Mixed
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
25% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 12 Critic Reviews
31
0% Positive
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
75% Mixed
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
25% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
The notion of an undercover agent with an untrustworthy mind is a great gimmick — and on a commercial level, Dying of the Light sometimes plays as just another high-concept vehicle for a comically overacting Mr. Cage. But Mr. Schrader’s vision is strong enough to rage against the hackier calculations.
If only Dying of the Light had broken Schrader's recent close-but-no-cigar streak.
User Score
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 33 User Ratings
3.1
12% Positive
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
27% Mixed
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
61% Negative
20 Ratings
20 Ratings
User Score
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 33 User Ratings
3.1
12% Positive
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
27% Mixed
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
61% Negative
20 Ratings
20 Ratings
Evan Lake (Nicholas Cage) was a legend at the C.I.A., but after years in the game, and a particularly horrible experience at the hands of the Taliban, he was diagnosed with dementia, and forced into retirement. Lake is moving on with his life when new information comes to light, that his old nemesis, a terrorist leader long believed dead, is back. Knowing their best chance to catch him is Lake, they turn to him for help, but can he keep it together long enough to complete his mission? This unbelievably was a b-movie, yet a remarkably strong performance for Nicholas Cage, who randomly had to go between C.I.A. legend and confused old man. His performance is aided by the late Anton Yelchin, playing an analyst who admires Lake so much, that he goes against orders to help him with his mission. The whole dynamic between the man at the end of his career on his last mission, and the boy at the start of his career on his first mission, really added something different, that you don't typically see in espionage films. Dying of The Light really does have a lot to like about it, but one must remember, it is an espionage film and a direct-to-video one at that. The writing isn't spectacular and parts of it are more than somewhat confusing. They also throw in a lot of Evan's flashbacks and delusions at the completely wrong times, which really did start to bother me as the film got more intense. Overall, I did enjoy this film, I thought the acting was terrific, and I loved the dynamic and chemistry between the two leading men, despite the obvious age difference. Dying of The Light certainly isn't a perfect movie, but it's still an entertaining one.
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The only real tension you feel in Dying of the Light is that between the thoughtful, tough-minded character piece Schrader presumably thought he was making and the bruised, indifferent hackwork that has ultimately made it to the screen.
A legendary director’s unsullied cut of Dying Of The Light would almost certainly be more interesting than the version the studio is dumping into theaters, but it might have been a lot sadder, too.
The irony is that in the low-key but mildly absorbing “Light,” Cage comes close to making it work.
The writer-director of Dying of the Light is Paul Schrader, screenwriter of “Raging Bull.” The star is Nicolas Cage — Raging Tool.
The Dying Of The Light is forgettable, anonymous and at times almost amateur, and the product of a director searching for a new method of storytelling.
A sick man chasing another sick man, it is as depressingly bad as it sounds, and even worse to witnes . It's a gambit to cast Nicolas Cage movies these days, he might perform well and there's a spark of his former glory, but eventually his performance is either lackluster or overly theatrical. Dying of the Light is no better, this is a severely tedious journey to watch despite the occasional good views. Its intended message of patriotism is buried underneath weak script, missed chemistry and overwhelming lack of thrill for a crime drama.
Evan Lake (Nicolas Cage) is a veteran agent of CIA, he is still vexed by the escape of one terrorist who tortured him decades ago. Believing that the terrorist still lives Lake pursues him before his brain disease incapacitates him further. This is a unique premise, both protagonist and antagonist have debilitating diseases. Lake even uses medical record to track down his prey, so the film wants to depict both sides with a strange common trait of frailty.
Sadly, the acting is inconsistent. At a couple of sequences Cage might seem emotionally spot-on as the disease hampers him, though most of the time he reverts back to maniacal laughs and screams. Anton Yelchin as Milton Schultz is supposed to be Lake's prodigy. The mentor and student relationship feels inauthentic, even though both actors show potential commitment. Script has a very harsh political undertone which may put some viewers off. The overall process is just an exhausting ordeal to watch.
The film moves back and forth from United States and a few exotic locations. Cinematography isn't bad, though it does seem underutilized. It awkwardly pans through a few slow scenes as the actually chase , filled with medical and espionage jargons, is highly uninteresting. If one is looking for action here, it's safe to say that the film offers so little, practically only a couple of scenes of bare bone action and these aren't even that well made.
Dying of the Light is an uninteresting thriller, there's no satisfying conclusion and the effort to make it there is awfully dull.
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Once upon a time, there was a film called Dying of the Light. Nicolas Winding Refn was supposed to direct, the script was written by Paul Schrader, and the lead actors should have been Harrison Ford and Channing Tatum. The story revolved around the revenge quest of a terminally ill CIA agent gone rogue, trying to track down a terminally ill terrorist who’d tortured him years before. It looked like a linear, unavoidably cheesy action flick, with a medical race against time to add a bit of zest. Then Ford left due to creative differences, and the project went back to square one. Schrader got promoted to director, and Refn stayed as executive producer. Nicolas Cage was cast, and suddenly Dying of the Light became widely known as “Nicholas Cage’s Dying of the Light”, inspiring more of the tongue-in-cheek comments and contemptuous cold-shouldering that have been chasing the erratic Leaving Las Vegas actor in the recent past. Despite having given top-notch performances for the best part of his career, Cage will be forever remembered as the guy shouting “Not the bees!” in the infamous scene from The Wicker Man (2006); a blunder the Internet will never forgive him. Schrader, too, had his share of highs and lows. Famous for writing Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, he is also known for more recent and less noteworthy directorial experiences, including The Canyons (starring Lindsay Lohan), and a prequel of The Exorcist you don’t want to watch.
Up until then, Dying of the Light had been no bed of roses, but still had the potential to be a decent film. Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) completed the cast, horror-fan Gabriel Kosuth joined as cinematographer, and shooting started. The real troubles began when Schrader submitted the first cut to the studio. Wordy notes from the producers started coming in, asking for changes and new cuts, pointing out that the film was much different from what they’d initially greenlit. According to Schrader, however, he was simply locked out of the editing process and “never asked back”. The pitiful catfight carried on, with the producers trying to play down their hijacking, and Refn (still attached as executive producer) openly siding with the director and talking of “artistic disrespect”. To escalate the drama, Schrader posted on his Facebook page a picture of himself, Cage, Yelchin and Refn wearing black printed T-shirts with their contract’s non-disparagement clause. His comment was: “The non-disparagement clause in an artist's contract gives the owners of the film the right to sue the artist should the owner deem anything the artist has said about the film to be 'derogatory'. I have no comment on the film or others connected with the picture”. I think what we have here is the workbook definition of “PR disaster”.
After a minuscule theatre release, Dying of the Light is now available on VOD and DVD. It might go without saying, but it’s far from satisfying. Cage’s character is an incoherent caricature, his acting and lines are all over the place; Yelchin too is completely implausible as a CIA operative, and the plot is far-fetched, mostly rattled off in ad-hoc character dialogues. The pace is thoroughly inconsistent and the third act is idiotically cut, with the climax scene repeated twice for no other purpose than showing a laughable action sequence with cap guns. How curious; who would have thought that the studio wouldn’t be able to make a better film than its director, after unilaterally taking control in post-production? An eye-opening consideration came from Kosuth’s comment in a Variety article: “I'm trying to understand why would someone deliberately ruin such a visual expression. Just because it's possible? Why would someone damage something achieved with unknown effort and sleepless nights? Just because there are people today who cannot take a human activity called artistic creation seriously?”. If anything, Dying of the Light will live as another meaningful chapter in the “cinema gone wrong” series.
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This film was edited, mixed, scored without the director’s approval. Cage and Yelchin disavowed the movie. So what you’re watching is a bunch of dumbass producers assembling a bonehead cut of the picture – like Guy Fieri trying to cook at a four-star French restaurant. Schrader released his own cut of the movie called “Dark”, which you can find on Torrent sites and can be seen by request at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC). Oh yeah, and both this pic and the video game steal their title from an old Dylan Thomas poem, lines familiar to anyone who has watched Nolan’s Interstellar:
“Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
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in the end, it's just a very bland film, with nothing outstanding. the action is so so, the tension is so so, the acting is okay, but it also lacks a hot young female. It's just a very straight story with no attention for intrige. It would have been better if we weren't immediately informed that the Bad Guy was still alive, or if we were really unsure if Lake was hallucinating, this would have made it more tense, challenging, interesting.
This was just very, very ****
~ The Melancholic Alcoholic.
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