Cage Recommendation: Kill Chain

The “John Wick” films have done a great job at inspiring a surge of uninspired copycat movies that try to replicate the formula, but altogether fail miserably due to lack of experience or ultimately lacking talent. The amount of straight to video/streaming service action movies that try to profit off the success of the Wick films is staggering and does the action genre more harm than good due to the stagnation of ideas; even though the action genre is mainly one that entices violence over actual thought. “Kill Chain” follows this trend and is a 2019 direct to video Nicolas Cage vehicle and like many of its failed brethren, it too tries to replicate a sort of “John Wick” atmosphere teeming with so many clichés that it made huge chunks of the movie unbearable.

There are two different types of Nicolas Cage films, ones that takes effort and are led by very specific directors with a very specific vision of how his character is supposes to act, and then there are his direct to video movies that have none of that. “Kill Chain” is another look at a Nicolas Cage movie that has potential but is squandered either because of a lack of vision or a lack of originality, whether it’s the story that is unoriginal or the way the movie is directed is open to critiquing, which I am doing. It comes off as something that is easily forgettable unlike other “John Wick” rip-offs that fail but fail in style.

There is nothing in this movie that sets itself apart from all the other direct to video action movies that are lost in the depths of all the other bad action movies that have personality but are ultimately bad to say the least. The cinematography in the film is flat and the action scenes are too spastic in trying to create motion with the camera making it hard to understand the actions going on in each frame. Sometimes to film a great action scene all you have to do is set the camera down, lock it into place, and let the choreography speak for itself without trying to give the audience motion sickness.

This piece of advice is lost now since most action movie directors have decided that more motion provides a bigger adrenaline rush for the audience. The movie also has a lack of color grading that could have given it a specific style, but again the potential there is lost or was possibly spent on the movie’s poster alone.