Yep, we’re still on the crazy train, and what’s more, we’re picking back up with the regular conductor of said train with another Nic Cage starring role. And I am once again in awe of him being able to find productions that fit perfectly into his extremely idiosyncratic wheelhouse. This film is the English-language debut of Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono and, far as I can ascertain, this is the first time Cage has worked on a mainly-Japanese production. But much like the film they have built around themselves, their act of cultural exchange makes perfect sense. After all, crazy surpasses any and all language barriers.
The setting of this film is what happens when people who know their film history put two and two together regarding what can be argued are the iconic film genres for Japan and the United States: Samurai movies and Westerns. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland (I imagine this is what Goichi Suda’s Fallout would look like), with the only hint of ‘civilisation’ being Samurai Town, a place that looks like two completely different cultures collided into each other. Now, while that notion is itself part of the main plot (more on that in a bit), the way this cultural contrast is handled is actually quite refreshing. Where Kate tried to show where both cultures take cues from each other, the visuals and general aesthetic here keeps them in the same space, but not occupying each other’s space. They’re given room to just be themselves, which given how much the two genres have historically cribbed from each other is quite a nice touch.
From there, Nic Cage as yet another unnamed hero in the wrong place at the wrong time (when he isn’t robbing banks next to the guy that directed The Other Woman), who is sent out into the wasteland by the Governor (played by cult horror legend Bill Moseley) to find his missing daughter Bernice (Sofia Boutella). What follows is a frenzied and multi-coloured mish-mash of all sorts of different action tropes, keeping up with the shoulder-to-shoulder cultural aesthetics in how we have cowboy gunslingers and samurai, but without trying to hybridise them. The fight scenes here are really damn cool, aided by the presence of Tak Sakaguchi of Versus fame as the Governor’s decapitator, and when it gets into Cage’s and even Bernice’s dream sequences, things get trippy really damn quickly.
Not that this is just weirdness and bloodspray for their own sakes, although this honestly could have coasted just on that with how well it’s presented here. What is ultimately at the core of this Japanese/American juxtaposition is an aspect of both cultures’ histories that… let’s just say both are hesitant to really discuss: The nuclear option. The spectre of the bomb looms large over this entire narrative, not just in the literal nuclear fallout but also in the way its title manifests within the story. It’s a picture of a society clinging onto life, while being haunted by the lives obscured by the atomic afterglow. A society beholden to white American men who set the metronome that everyone else lives by, keeping everyone stuck in the past with the other lost lives.
The imagery that brings this all forward can range from the direct (a mushroom cloud) to the surreal (women’s bodies encased in mannequin parts), but all of it manages to click together to create a nightmare from deep within the genetic memory. It’s quite powerful in its endearingly frenzied methods, and it gives Nic Cage a solid outlet for both traumatised drama and quintessentially him moments.
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