Japanese director Sion Sono has always pushed the envelope in his own crackpot way. One thinks back to Suicide Club with all those Japanese schoolgirls merrily leaping to their death in front of a train; or forever-growing killer hair in Exte: Hair Extensions. Love Exposure– the bonkers four-hour epic about a man who secretly photographs under women’s skirts. Why Don’t You Play in Hell?– his splattery saga of a young film crew rolling while rival Yakuza gangs slice each other to ribbons. Or the glorious all-rap action film Tokyo Tribe.
So, I was excited to hear he had partnered with Nicolas Cage for a supposedly even more insane English-language film called Prisoners of the Ghostland. Unfortunately, the director had a heart attack during the making of it, and Cage suggested that the shooting, which was supposed to be in America, return to Japan so that Sono could comfortably direct the film there. And Cage reportedly said it “might be the wildest film I’ve ever made.” Quite a statement coming from the king of excess.
The film has a promising premise. Set in a post-apocalyptic faux-Western setting of Samuari Town, an English-speaking Governor (Bill Moseley)- all decked out in a white suit and cowboy hat- has captured Nicolas Cage, a wanted criminal. He decks him in a leather suit that is tricked out with explosives set to go off if he doesn’t track down and return the Governor’s granddaughter Bernice (Sofia Boutella) in five-days-time. There are even two explosives in the crotch area for each testicle. Cage is haunted by memories of a botched bank-robbery with a trigger-happy partner named “Psycho” (Nick Cassavetes) who blasted the bank with bodies- including a cute little boy next to a gumball machine. So maybe this journey and recovery of Bernice is Cage’s way of redemption.
Now Bernice is trapped in the “Ghostland,” a hellish nightmare place where the townspeople spend all day yanking back the minute hand on a giant clock to hold back time and women are encased in mannequin parts, their voices taken away. The set-decoration and costuming is a riot of traditional Japanese costuming and Mad Max-like future-wear. There are “rat-men” and one man Enoch reads classic books to the children but warns Nicolas Cage that there is no getting out of Ghostland. But the clock and his testicles are ticking.
With such a scenario one would expect Sono to have a mad field day, and he somewhat does. But the film has no momentum- it just spins its surreal wheels. It eventually builds to a big action sequence and sword fight but there’s nothing propelling the story except Cage’s hammy growl and some more startling visuals. What was so cool about Tokyo Tribe, his rap-filled gang film, was that there were all these factions and they came together at the end in loony and inspired ways. And you actually cared about the cartoonish characters. There’s nothing to invest in here. I really wanted to love this movie because the director has astonished me in the past, but as Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland, “there is no there there” in Ghostland.
(In theaters and on VOD and Digital on September 17)
