Cage Recommendation: Score to Settle

It is one of the cosmos’s many injustices that there are only two types of films that Nicolas Cage stars in now: cheaply made direct to video crime movies to pay off his mountain of debt or films that are meticulously created by writers/directors that want to utilize the depth that the star is capable of reaching with the proper pushes. There are gleams in Cage’s film role choices, but it is not surprising that most of his ventures as of late are ones to be avoided at all cost. A Score to Settle falls into the former rather than the latter, unfortunately. A movie that is generic as it is boring, it does nothing to bring interesting writing or directing to the star’s repertoire as it is a cookie cutter revenge story with mountains of clichés stacked against it. 

The movie begins with a very convincing actor portraying a young Cage as a low-level mob enforcer witnessing his boss murder a man with a baseball bat, a visual motif that will be repeated several times throughout the movie, and then jump cutting 19 years to an older grizzled Cage being released early from prison. Frank, Cage’s character, suffers from insomnia so severe that it has deteriorated his mental stability, this is the reason for his early departure. If left unchecked and untreated, his condition will lead to hallucinations, dementia, and more dilapidating conditions. His son, Joey, is there to meet him on the night he is released introducing the clichés here, their relationship is strained due to Frank’s absence leading to some deep-seated animosity between the two men.  They play superficial catch up while sharing roadside coffee as Frank enjoys his new found freedom, taking in the air calling back to the now legendary Con-Air expression, he later gives their cab driver an address to the old family home that houses Frank’s hidden stash of money he earned from his mob boss; the bloody bat is there too. It is revealed that Frank took the fall for his boss’s crime of murder as they assured him that his stint in prison would only be for a few years and that he would be properly compensated and joey would be taken care of, but as his charges stacked up against him 6 years became 19 costing Joey a father.

The second act of the movie is the “emotional” center and is mainly Frank and Joey bonding, forming the father-son relationship that was denied due to Frank’s choices. They bond the only way two emotionally stunted men do; they use Frank’s stash of money to live in luxury for as long as his blood money can allow them. Que the Vegas style spending montage where we see the two buy a corvette, fancy suits, cell phones (Frank is old and doesn’t technology good), and a lavish hotel room in a call girl hotspot. The aforementioned call girl center gives Frank a chance at release after being stuck in prison for 19 years, he tells Joey he has not been with a woman since his wife’s passing and is nervous on how to initial the transaction with the dough eyed call girl Simone, played by Karolina Wydra. 

After an awkward exchange the two do the sideways shuffle, directed very awkwardly too, and Frank falls for Simone who reveals to him that her real name is Jennifer after he drops her off in front of her actual house, this might be a red flag in reality once you think about it. Many of the daytime scenes are structured in this way, following Frank and Joey or Frank and Jennifer, but by night Frank is relentlessly on the hunt for those that had wronged him, which leads to him to seek out old mob members, first being his closest friend Q, played by Benjamin Bratt. Q acts as the narrative delivery machine that gives Frank the details he needs to settle the score, see what I did there, this is where we see one of the only interesting part of the movie before it goes underwritten by the end. Seeing the extent of Frank’s mental deterioration is interesting as we see his mood swings and hysteria hit record highs, making one of the movie’s main antagonist be a diseased brain being left untreated. 

A Score to Settle brings nothing new, but tries to be profound by the end with several revelations that feel underwritten and/or lazy because of the lack of narrative focus. The movie aims to say to the viewer that the cycle of violence and deceit can only be solved by even more violence. The movie ultimately wastes the viewers time; unless the viewer is a dedicated apostle in the cult of Cage.