Review: Nicolas Cage Burns It Down, Again, In 'Sympathy For the Devil'

By Jason Adams | Film | July 28, 2023 |

By Jason Adams | Film | July 28, 2023 |

If I were to draft a list of people I’d be most distraught to see suddenly appear in the backseat of my car, I can say with some certainty that Nicolas Cage would be on said list. No good can come from that! And then you put Nicolas Cage in a blood-red dinner jacket with a shock of hair dyed to match and you have that Nicolas Cage pop up in your rearview? Forget about it, buddy, that’s Chinatown. That’s incest and a bullet through the eyeball. No good!

And sure enough, that’s the terrible horrible no good very bad lesson that Joel Kinnaman learns in Sympathy For the Devil, the latest Nic Cage joint to showcase Nic Cage doing what Nic Cage does, much to the delight of Nic Cage fans, most of whom seem perfectly pleased to keep getting fed the same Nic Cage thing. I admit myself an agnostic—I admit it again that is, after saying as much in my review of Prisoners of the Ghostland back in 2021 which truly felt like his schtick on fumes. Good news though—it works better here! And it works better than it did in that dud Renfield too, which somehow made Nicolas Cage playing Dracula feel totally bloodless.

Whether Cage is playing the Devil or not in Sympathy For the Devil I’ll leave to you the viewer to discover for yourselves—the film certainly flirts with that possibility after he plops himself down all Hot-Topic’d up in the backseat of regular-guy David (Kinnaman), who’s just frantically arrived in the Las Vegas parking garage of the hospital where his wife is upstairs giving birth. We already know at that point (thanks to some awkwardly delivered backstory) that David’s wife has previously miscarried, and so the situation for him is already on edge. Then you toss Nic Cage into your backseat and all bets are off.

Cage’s character shall remain nameless, but the credits call him “The Passenger” so … let’s continue calling him Nicolas Cage. Nicolas Cage presses a gun to the back of David’s neck and tells him to drive, and we’re off unto the sort of night of neon-lit desert oblivion that only a Las Vegas-and-its-surroundings-set movie can deliver. What does Nicolas Cage want with David? He seems convinced that David isn’t really David, and their quest further out into the middle of nowhere will wrap up several poor and unsuspecting locals into its dystopia—exactly the folks you’d expect, too. A traffic cop. A diner waitress. A truck driver. If that puppeteered roadrunner from Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City had strolled through the background I wouldn’t have been surprised, given the arch version of reality on display here.

So the plot of Sympathy For the Devil could basically be distilled to the log-line of “It’s Collateral meets A History of Violence,” although it’s far more likely somebody just paid for Nicolas Cage and let the rest fall where it might. Nobody will be mistaking this for either of those classics. But as a B-grade neo-noir two-hander where you can see the last act coming from outer space it’s not a terrible waste of time either.

Cage, believe it or not given all I’ve just said, does ultimately make his character feel more human than many of the cartoons he’s played previously—he might rant about being “100% sex” and sinus problems and tuna melts as furiously as he does homicide, but his spittle-flecked Southie accent and sly amusement at every turn do somewhat ground this nameless fellow; it’s not quite Pig, but it’ll do.

For his part, Kinnaman (oh yes remember him, he is in this) acquits himself as best as can be expected under the circumstances. He’s wirier here than we’ve seen him in some time—his eyes sunken, his face confounded. And he smartly underplays everything (as if he had a choice). But he makes wise decisions that bridge David’s consternation with a coolness, which Cage picks up on and which ease us unto the final act—the one when the diner tables will inevitably get flipped. So no, it might not be Mick Jagger chicken-dancing, but Nic Cage bugging his eyes out backlit by a parking lot on fire make this Sympathy For the Devil one we’re pleased to meet, too.