Milton (Nicolas Cage) is a lifetime criminal who was sent to hell when his life was finally ended. When he discovers that a cult leader by the name of Jonah King (Billy Burke) has killed his only daughter and taken his granddaughter, he escapes the realms of hell in search of the cult in order to save his grandchild and get one last chance at redemption. He only has three days to find the whereabouts of the cult, before Jonah sacrifices the child during the next full moon, in an attempt to bring hell on Earth.
Milton meets a young woman by the name of Piper (Amber Heard) while he is on his search. After helping her with a boyfriend problem, they take the boyfriend’s muscle car and she decides to go with Milton in his pursuit of the cult. The cult has some followers on the town’s police force and they quickly get involved in trying to stop Milton from reaching Jonah. It turns out that will be the least of Milton’s problems, as he is also being tracked by a man known only as The Accountant (William Fichtner), who has been sent by the Devil to bring Milton back. He will not stop until he gets Milton back where he belongs and he cannot be killed or destroyed by any man-made instrument. So it’s an all out race for Milton to try and find Jonah and the baby, before his time is up and he has to go back to hell. Milton will have to channel all his anger and use as fuel to get his mission done. He will not let anything or anyone stop him from rescuing his granddaughter.
This was the type of movie Nicolas Cage loves to be in. There were a lot of action scenes and of course he got to drive a powerful muscle car. The bad thing was that the story was kind of stupid. It almost reminded me of a Robert Rodriguez directed film, where the action is way over the top and it’s filled with a lot of blood splattering. Also of course Cage’s character was a real bad ass, who although seemed quiet, he was always ready for a fight. I also liked William Fichtner’s character, as the devil’s bounty hunter. He basically looked down on the mere humans that he came across with disgust and disregard. It was very humorous at times, the way he was treating people in his pursuit for information. He would then tell them when he would be seeing them again, which was funny because they didn’t realize he was a disciple of the devil. What I found to be kind of stupid with the story, was that the woman Piper, basically just jumped into this adventurous trek with Milton, without really knowing much about him or the fact that he had escaped from hell, and was putting her life on the line for him.
Another thing that was stupid was that this guy Jonah was all over the news, for the death of Milton’s daughter, but he seemed to walk around freely with not a care in the world. While I’m on the subject of Jonah, he was also a very mean and determined individual who would kill his own men if they stood in the way of him trying to bring hell on Earth. He was truly a devil worshiper, but didn’t realize that the devil really didn’t appreciate his type of followers. The action was cool, if not a little over the top. The car chase scenes were cool, and the stunts were pretty good as well. There was one aspect of Cage’s character that they should have used more, but I don’t want to say what that was. Let me just say that if he could survive in hell, dealing with things on Earth should have come easy. All in all I thought the movie was ok, but not outstanding. I gave the movie 1 ¾ cars out of 4. It could have had a better storyline, that wasn’t so over the top and unbelievable. The movie runs 1 hour and 44mins. It was rated R for strong brutal violence throughout, grisly images, some graphic sexual content, nudity and pervasive language. It was written by Patrick Lussier & Todd Farmer. It was also directed by Patrick Lussier. The film was distributed by Summit Entertainment, LLC. It was produced by Nu Image/Millennium Films, Michael De Luca Productions.
The next time someone tells you they’ve been through hell and back, they might be telling the truth. Ezo
Next movie review: Rango
