|
Hellish angels >> Nic Cage sheds some Oscar cred with City of Angels by MATTHEW HAYS
Where to begin? In an apparent effort to squander any cred his Oscar may have brought him, Nicolas Cage appears in City of Angels as (you guessed it) an angel. He's busy visiting people who are about to die, comforting them and easing them into the afterlife. He soon becomes smitten with Meg Ryan, who plays an idealistic surgeon who's in crisis mode after her patient dies during an open-heart operation she's conducted. Much maudlin music follows, as Cage appears to Ryan (he's normally invisible to mortals) and the two clearly have the hots for each other. There are two overwhelming questions that run through this movie. The first is: who cares? This is director Brad Silberling's second outing; his first was Casper and it shows (this makes great sense; when trying to remake a densely layered, intricate European film, get a director whose track record involves one mediocre kiddie film about animated ghosts). Ryan and Cage's screen personas are milked here--there's very little character development beyond their good looks. The alleged crisis facing Cage's character--should he give up immortality and reject angelhood so he can join Ryan in the here and now?--is reduced to base simplicity, becoming so shallow a question it's impossible to muster any concern. And what Wenders managed to make whimsical, this Hollywood studio-backed film appears to actually take seriously, in a Hallmark kind of way. In fact, the whole thing starts to feel like a feature-length episode of that unbearably banal network program Touched by an Angel (alternate title: Banged by an Angel). Which begs the second question: why? Wenders' work, a critical favourite, should have been left alone. This is one of those truly embarrassing American remakes of European films, ranking right up there with Breathless, Cousins and Intersection. The press kit for City of Angels includes a notice to the press: "The filmmakers would appreciate the press's cooperation in not revealing the ending of this film to their readers." Frankly, I doubt many who venture to City of Angels will bother sticking around until the final credits to find out. City of Angels opens this Friday, April 10
|
Good Christ this movie put me in a grumpy mood. There is no style, no vision, a wafer-thin plot, nary an inspiration in sight and, what's worse, it's not even based on an original concept--it's a remake of Wim Wenders' delightful 1987 film Wings of Desire.