Justice

In this offering we find Nicholas Cage as English teacher Will. Will is thrown into a world of violence and retribution after his wife Laura, played by January Jones, is beaten, raped and left for dead. When he is offered the chance for the man who carried out the attack to be taken care of courtesy of a bullet in the head he reluctantly takes it.

Unbeknown to him he has agreed to a Faustian pact with a shadowy underground group led by the charismatically sinister Gerard played by Guy Pearce, this is a gang who specialise in rough justice. There is no such thing as a free lunch and soon enough Will is told he must take out a complete stranger who he is told is a paedophile. Expect he's not, he's a journalist and after an accident that leaves the journalist dead Cage now seems to half of New Orleans him. The film races breathlessly to its conclusion which takes place in a shopping mall that has been left to decay since the Katrina disaster.

With an all star cast and decent enough if not fantastically original script, on paper this looks like a decent film. On viewing though it fails to hit many of its intended goals. It lacks any real surprises or thrills and some of the twists you can see a mile away. Cage and Jones do their best to keep the film moving but the usually fantastic Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter) looks like she hasn't been given a script and is having to improv with the rest of the cast.

The one stand out performance is from the consistently top draw Guy Pearce who revels in his sinister persona. The film especially at the beginning is bordering on saccharin sweet with Cage and Jones celebrating their fifth year wedding anniversary, planning on kids and looking to the future. He is the well liked English teacher that is one of the few people that can connect to the kids at the school that he teaches and she is a cello player in a top class orchestra. It does however; manage to pull back from going completely over the rail on the sentimentality scale.

For a lot of people this film might just be what they want. A couple of hours of chases and action with a bit of intrigue thrown in. However, it's not one that is going to challenge the grey matter anytime soon. Disappointing.