"How long can [you] stand it?" The Wicker Man review thread (open spoilers).

Cafe Society
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We need a new Wicker Man thread, one without spoiler boxes, and one with “Wicker” without a typo in the thread title.

My thread title is a pun, BTW, on a line from the movie and mocking the ridiculous length of my review, which I think I’m going to have to break up into chunks to post. Sorry, but I just can’t help myself. So, to wit[lessness]:

Nic Cage no ChiP off the old Woodward block

“Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.” – William Blake, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The essential problem with the *Wicker Man * remake isn’t that it lacks interesting ideas; it’s that LaBute never resolved the problem of how his film should relate to the 1973 British original. Dismissive of the greatest strengths of the original, yet lacking the conviction to present its own story as a coherent whole sufficiently independent of the original, this film lacks much of the eerie, ominous power of the original and falls emotionally flat.

First, a recap: the strikingly original cult film The Wicker Man was written by the accomplished mystery-writer Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) and directed by Robin Hardy, a rookie to the movie business but a seasoned adman. Their movie was a minor masterpiece of cult cinema: a thinking person’s “horror” film, a philosophical conflict pitting a pious, prudish Christian detective against a hermetic island community of equally pious, sexually licentious pagans conspiring to keep secret the whereabouts of a young girl of their village. Detective Howie (Edward Woodward, in fine upright form, if inconstant Scottish accent) puzzles out just enough of the mystery to land himself into the villagers’ trap, the wicker man of the title. The movie’s genre-bending reflected the indie and, re Hardy, at least, amateurish nature of the film’s production: by turns a detective procedural, a 60’s arthouse sexploitation flick, an atmospheric suspense chiller, a religious melodrama, a musical, a black comedy, and, yes, a horror film with an uncompromising and appalling downer ending, The Wicker Man was a compelling, unpredictable, taboo-breaking film experience in part because of its defiance of any and all movie formulae.

The film is strikingly serious in its treatment of religious themes and nudity. Christianity is portrayed as oppressively dour and intolerant and its tenets are even mocked, yet Howie’s martyr’s death was seized on by many viewers as arguing for a sublime justification of his faith. The pagan subculture is lovingly portrayed as an appealingly joyous, simple, uninhibited one with much socializing and wit, beer-drinking, singing and dancing – yet is revealed at the end to be duplicitous, callous, and merciless. (Many pagans welcome the more benevolent aspects of this portrayal, while protesting the license taken with the tenets and rituals of their faith.) There is a third, more subversive interpretation of the film’s religious themes, however, which many if not all fans of the film have seized upon: a “pox on both your houses” dismissal of any and all organized religion as just so much ineffectual, doctrinaire hooey, responsible for so much intolerance and cruelty. There is also abundant eroticism and nudity, but it is all uniquely couched in a pagan context (as rituals celebrating love and loss, sexual maturation and fertility, and a notorious seduction song designed to test Howie’s virginity).

LaBute’s remake dispenses with most of this and many of the other elements that made movie magic in the ‘73 original. His pagan islanders are updated to the present, to Puget Sound, of all places, where they reside – as did their Scottish cinematic forebears – in splendid isolation on a privately owned island, spared from visits by outsiders and living off the grid, free of what Mark Twain called “modern inconveniences”. Gone are the songs and dances and the titillating rituals of sexual initiation, pair-bonding and fertility (a fall fertility ritual is alluded to, but the villagers’ paganism is never enlivened or embodied in any ritualistic way, until the May Day parade at the end. Instead of Paul Giovanni’s largely historically authentic score featuring a variety of spirited, cheerful Olde English folk songs and poems, we now have an understated but conventionally foreboding score, by Angelo Badalamenti, sporting a blend of symphonic instruments and synthesizer washes in an unwaveringly minor, mournful key. Gone are the references to apples, corn, barley and hares; gone too is the feudal lord resplendent on his baronial estate. For these islanders are a closely-hewn community (“colony,” actually) of monocultural apiarists – bee-keepers, for us laymen – whose social organization dutifully apes that of the bees in all their ruthless efficiency and cruelty.

Insect metaphors for human social interactions are a rich, if seldom-tapped, vein for venting cinematic and literary spleen. (Since I’m basically a philistine, I’ll limit this to cinematic references, if you don’t mind.) Insects, being so, well, insect-like, readily lend themselves as a viscerally unappealing basis for all sorts of stingingly cynical social critiques and satirical barbs. In recent years we’ve had David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly, in which “Brendlefly” waxes philosophically about being an insect who dreamt he was a man but who is no longer bound by concepts of ethics or morals, and a bracing adaptation of A.S. Byatt’s novel Angels & Insects, whose extended metaphor of a suspiciously uniformly blond upper-class English family (which has secretly patterned itself in its organization and incest after ants) is Byatt’s hook for baiting the English class system – on a genetic level, if you will. And who can forget Harry Lime’s [Orson Welles’] cynical hypothetical Faustian bargain in The Third Man? Looking down upon the Viennese multitude from the airy heights of a Ferris wheel, Lime tempts his friend [Joseph Cotten] with the same proposition that led him to become a black-marketeer in watered-down penicillin – by comparing the crowds below to so many ants, a few of whom would die, anonymously and unknown to the syndicate, but not without generating a fantastic profit for them first… Can anyone honestly claim that those unknown ants mean more to him than the fortune generated by killing them? Insects are unfeeling, blindly dogged in their pursuits, and inhuman[e]; as are human beings when patterned after them.

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[Part 2]

The apiarist theme runs throughout the island life, generating an understated ominous buzz of its own, and it’s great fun to follow the imagery and parallels in the matriarchal colony. First there’s the beehives themselves, resting on the ground in a straw-colored field (the only such field in the film) instead of stuck on tree branches, but otherwise hilariously loyal to the stereotypical image of a beehive (think of “Winnie the Pooh” illustrations for a rough guide. There’s the queen bee herself, Sister Summersisle [why the extra “s,” LaBute?], generally attended to by a protective screen of implacable maidenly guards, just as in the beehives and serenely overseeing all, sometimes from the comfort of her minimalist, white linen-strewn bedroom chamber. And so it follows for the rest of the village’s ranks. Worker bees may be male or female, but all the overseers are female, and they’re a dour, intimidating-looking lot, as are the bee-keepers themselves, armed with smokers and bedecked in crypto-Victorian bee-keeper costumes with fascistic black mesh-masks protecting, but also obscuring, their faces. The adults and children keep to themselves, rigidly segregated by sex, with girls receiving a rigid education whilst the boys are kept hard at work, learning – and saying – nothing. (One critic has speculated that the males have all had their tongues removed, and it’s a tempting, if uncertain, detail, and one perhaps adapted, along with the grisly details of the pilot’s death, from Tom Tryon’s early-1970’s novel Harvest Home.) There is also the suggestion that many male babies are killed, but this also remains unresolved; in any event, it’s clear that the females greatly outnumber the males. What’s also unnerving is the predominance of blonde, and especially platinum-blonde, girls, even though many of the village women are darker (as are the village men). This turns out to be a cheap resort to a horror-movie cliche, part Village of the Damned, part Angels & Insects, since the blondest girl of them all is the improbable daughter of Nic Cage and his long-lost seductress, dark-tressed Willow Woodward [Kate Beahan]. As the film develops it is revealed that the colony has found a means of injecting at least some new blood into the colony; the lucky chosen women, who may well be all descended from or related to Sister Summersisle (in yet another tempting but unresolved detail) get to leave the hive for a time, to find a man willing to be seduced. (All those professional movie critics who have referred to the village men being used for brute labor and occasional sexual services may be only half right, as it’s not really clear that any village men are allowed to father any children. Indeed, it may not be just their tongues that have been amputated!) These outsider “drones” make for future wicker-man fodder, should it be needed, and that’s where our hapless would-be hero, Nic Cage, comes in. That his first real act in the village is to hesitatingly drink a stein of [honey-based] mead and smash a bee resting on the bar (to the anger of the women – there are no men there – present) does not bode well for his time on the island.

Cage’s character, provocatively named Edward Malus, is another stark departure from the 1973 Shaffer screenplay, in which the character was Detective Howie. In name part tip-‘o-the-hat to his role’s originator (Edward Woodward), part Freudian wordplay [male or even mallet + phallus? In any event, it’s pronounced “male-us”], the name apparently refers to both a strain of apple dependent on bees for its promulgation (now, there’s a clever tribute to the original film!) as well as to the Latin for the principle of evil, which makes less sense, except perhaps as an acknowledgment that as the recipient of an unposted letter by Willow, his ex-girlfriend, luring him to the island, Malus fulfills the classical dramatic definition of the story’s antagonist, with the island conspirators being, technically, the protagonists. (Glad to get that out of the way.)

But Malus is also a different kind of cop, and a very different sort of character, from Det. Howie. Howie was priggish church deacon as well as an accomplished detective, secure in his career accomplishments and authoritative in his voice and bearing – a most distinguished and “gallant fellow” (to quote that film’s Willow). By contrast, the American remake centers on a peon amongst lawmen – a lowly California Highway Patrol motorcycle cop – a ChiP, in short. (Americans of a certain age and unsophistication will lovingly recall the lowbrow police show “ChiPs” from the late-‘70’s, and smile at this.) And this particular officer is the type of guy who eats salads at truck stops and buys self-help tapes. And things aren’t going to get any better for him soon. By the time he receives the fateful letter (illuminated in an unworldly calligraphic script, the type that was perhaps last taught to students before the Jazz Age), Malus is having a rough time of it, suffering post-traumatic stress and taking a pill-popping breather from his job, in accordance with an overdetermined (and most un-Shaffer-like) early plot-point in the islanders’ conspiracy. For it turns out that this opening-reel high-speed car crash involving Cage, a little girl’s doll, the blonde, nasty little girl and her put-upon mother, and a tractor-trailer truck that slams into their car parked on the highway shoulder is all a massive contrivance, somehow staged by the islanders to further rope Malus in. Incredibly, the two “victims”’s fiery death – or at least Malus can only presume so, since he lost consciousness in the explosion of the gas tank – was faked, with the little girl and her mother popping up much later in the film’s epilogue, although I didn’t spot them and can’t personally vouch for their reappearance. That LaBute shoehorns in this apparently faked accident (you see, the bodies were never found, dee-dee-dee-dee) as the means to drive Malus mad with guilt, so that he will later feel compelled to respond to Willow’s letter (like Don Quixote embarking to tilt at windmills, in another belabored bit), is just way too implausible and over-the-top. It’s also unduly hackneyed; are there no more movie heroes who can do their duty without being driven by a tragic backstory? The accident further mars the tone of the film by being depicted, over and over in increasingly distorted and CGI-inflected ways, in Malus’ tortured flashbacks, dreams and hallucinations. (Jackhammers are less headache-inducing that this.) One thing all viewers can agree on is the rigorously rational quality of good ol’ Det. Howie. PTSD? Anti-anxiety medication? CGI bad dreams and hallucinations? *Self-help * tapes? What nonsense is this?, he would doubtless snort.

Mr. Malus’ professionalism is critically undermined in yet another way. After he’s mucked around the island for a while and has grown impatient with Willow’s unhelpful inarticulateness, she conveniently lets slip that he’s Rowan’s father. At this point, Malus begins to go into a familiar Nic Cage Overdrive [TM], and he increasingly is ruled by his emotions, hoarsely barking “Rowan? Rowan?” at every turn. His authority was always questionable at best; the villagers had immediately (as he should have noticed, rather too immediately) pegged him as a mere copper way out of his jurisdiction. By the end of the film, he’s clearly acting more as a father than as an officer of the law. Along the way, he twice nearly dies in traps set by the villagers, baited with some red article of clothing (Rowan’s sweater being the red herring, and how Malus falls for it, every time); the first nearly does him in, which would’ve been mighty inconvenient to the plot had it succeeded. These cheap funhouse shocks – intended as sops to the impatient teenage horror fan, no doubt – further dilute the modestly effective atmospherics of eerie menace established by the village’s bee-centered strangeness.

Det. Howie was driven near-mad in his search by his emotions, too, but his motivations were very different. Howie’s determination to find the girl was disinterested – he had no personal link to anyone on the island – and his emotions were driven by his Christian repugnance at pagan mores and barbarism. Malus’ passion is principally that of an ex-lover and later, that of a father, and his emotions lead him to behave in ways that are not upright so much as unhinged. Howie’s determination underscored the religio-philosophical conflict in that film; Malus’ emotionalism presumably must underscore LaBute’s dichotomous gender war between the outside patriarchal world and Summersisle’s calm (if quietly fascistic) matriarchy. But does it, really? Malus is a very poor figurehead for patriarchy; if anything, he’s a postmodern, touchy-feely cop drafted at the last moment, unwillingly and with much angst, into his newly-found role as a father. (Sperm donor, more like it.)

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[Part 3]

Which raises a related point: was LaBute’s single-minded emphasis on gender politics necessary, given the egalitarian state of gender relations in the original Summerisle? Lord Summerisle [Christopher Lee] wasn’t a patriarch in the biological sense (it was never established that he’d ever fathered children) so much as a swinging ladies’ man and bad-boy bachelor. As for his estate, title, and position as unquestioned leader and civil authority, it seems to have been all inherited; his power derives from his class and not his gender, and had he been born a girl, the island would’ve been led by a Lady Summerisle. In any event, the women have plenty of power and authority of their own, as priestess, teacher (as well as one man, so that’s not a pink-collar occupational ghetto), civil servants, shopkeepers… and with free and easy congress in the pub, and so forth. You could accuse the pagans as being unbalanced in their religiosity, but not in their sexual politics, in which everything balances out nicely, yin and yang, masculine and feminine, and both being absolutely necessary.

If LaBute’s film (for as both director and writer/adaptor of Shaffer’s ‘73 screenplay, he must be condemned with auteur status for this) falls short in dealing with the Big Themes, then it’s positively slapdash with the little details and plot points so crucial to the effectiveness of a mystery. Much of the sloppiness stems directly from the screenplay, and some are just goofs. Why should it matter in the slightest whether the letter arrived with a stamp or not – except to raise suspicions when it arrives without one? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for it to have been posted (via the pilot, and with some understandable delay) rather than be hand-delivered, since it now suggests that Willow Woodward was able to leave the island at will to pointlessly hand-deliver it (but anonymously, even though she signed the letter) to Malus in California? (The postcard in the original film was hand-delivered but anonymously, and was left unsigned.) Consider that impossibly staged accident detailed earlier – aside from the obvious problems it posed, didn’t anyone notice that since the car was parked on an outside curve, there’s no way that truck could’ve stayed on the road and kept going? (And to repeat the goof in all those flashbacks…) The village backstory is risibly ludicrous. Sister Summersisle [six-time Oscar-nominated Ellen Burstyn] disjointedly explains that her ancestors had initially settled in Massachusetts, “near Salem,” and thus they began their trek westwards to escape [Christian] persecution. She goes to note that they eventually settled on this island in Puget Sound in the mid-19th-C. This raises more questions than it answers, such as how did they find Indian territory, and why did it take them almost two centuries to traverse a continent when most other settlers managed it in about six months or less (Donner Party excepted)? Why didn’t they just settle on a nearby island off of the coast of Massachusetts or, better yet, neighboring Rhode Island, which was chartered as a refuge for religious nonconformists, apostates, and atheists? And at what historical juncture did Summersisle’s home have a gas system installed (notice the profligate profusion of gas lamps lighting her home?) At what point did this island, presumably unsettled by whites prior to these pagans, acquire the ancient ruins of an abandoned churchyard (so similar to that in the original film)? And speaking of anachronisms, how do they maintain a website and conduct commercial transactions in response to orders placed, if the island lacks electricity and all telecommunications? How exactly could the honey production fail? Presumably it was by one of the two following scenarios: either the flowering plants all failed to flower and fruit, or something’s killing off the bees (some bee disease, mites, wasps, Africanized bees from California, boredom). Since there were plenty of bees still around, it must’ve been a generalized arboreal failure, but that was never alluded to… merely a failure of [bees’ production of] honey. And wouldn’t a general crop failure have plunged the village into virtual starvation, since their basic subsistence crops would’ve failed? (Even with the pilot visiting most days, they don’t do enough trade with the mainland to import their basic foodstuffs; they must grow their own food.) But where and how do they grow all of this food, and where are the acres and acres of flowering plants required to sustain to many bees? If European colonists, and later settlers to the West could be counted on anything, it was their steady pace of deforestation. For a century-and-a-half-old village utterly dependent on burning wood for heating and cooking, this village was still suspiciously half-choked by old-growth forest. (This film is much less realistic in its locations than the original, which cobbled together a convincingly real village from astute location shooting and editing.) Why did music – even if it was limited to some plainsong religious chanting – play almost no role in the lives of these pagans, given its role in virtually every other cult and religion and, for that matter, culture around the world? (I’m not sure if “the drone must die!” chant really counts; it sounded more like a stadium taunt.) If Willow’s story was that she and Rowan had been largely ostracized, the other islanders could’ve done a lot more to back up that story. It’s vexing to observe that Malus doesn’t do any better a job at questioning the villagers than did his predecessor; both are inexplicably content to let the villagers terminate conversations just when they’re getting interesting (Howie/Malus never says, “What do you mean, she burned to death? How? Where? When? And you’re not free to go until I get some answers.”) Why was the character of the pilot that of a neutral outsider, to be killed the first time he brings a visitor? Why didn’t Malus attempt to arrest either Sister Beech or her fellow conspirator for the murder of the pilot, after Malus overheard their virtual confession? How do the women propose to deal with not just one but two missing persons last known to be on their island? How much longer could the island sirens have continued to prey upon police academy grads, before the law would get wise? And just how many more of these rumspriga-like sabbaticals can take place before some maiden spills the beans, anyway? After all, there’s bees, and there’s “the birds and the bees,” with temptations ever-beckoning. Even Willow, as loyal to her clan as she turns out to be, clearly was suffering from a crisis of conscience when she begged Malus to forgive her. And when exactly did Willow steal Malus’ bullets – was it when she saved him from the cistern? Why did he never notice the weight difference, or check his gun before charging off to find and save Rowan? The detail of breaking Malus’ legs prior to his immolation was a nicely sadistic touch, but it would’ve made more sense to do that to Det. Howie, who was simply dumped inside his wicker man and left unrestrained. But wouldn’t the flames have consumed enough of the rope so that it would’ve snapped, prematurely releasing a screaming and roasted but not yet well-done Malus onto the statue’s base?

I’m also left with a few more critiques of LaBute’s writing and direction, blighted by oversights and missed opportunities. I would’ve liked to have seen a 17th-C. form of punishment – such as the pillory or stockade – set up on a platform amongst the beehives; that would’ve been a great instrument of social control for the women to impose on the men, or on their wayward sisters. There should’ve been a scene foreshadowing and explaining the May Day festivities (like the scene in the original with Det. Howie in the library, reading up on May Day rituals and archetypes), if only to defuse the inappropriate levity that many newbies have when seeing the parade with all the animal totems, and then Nic Cage “running around in a bear suit,” as many critics have pointed out. (Have these critics even seen the original? Did they laugh when Edward Woodward ran around in a Punch suit? I suspect not, largely because that preparatory scene in the library schooled them and prepared them for the hobbyhorse, Punch, the Teaser, six Swordsmen, and so forth.) Such exposition could have been written into Malus’ scene at Dr. Moss’, after she casually mentions that she’d treated him with “the old methods” (which I suspect was a vigorous bleeding; Malus seemed weakened for her touch) and pointedly closes her book on rituals. What if Malus had voiced an interest in the book, and Dr. Moss had condescended to point out a couple of quaint things, only to suddenly restrict his access to it? Or, alternatively, she could have endeavored to educate him in their ways, only to have him cut her off to continue his search for Rowan. In any event, there should’ve been some exposition explaining the whole “Fool/King For A Day” dynamic, which originally applied to whoever wore the “Punch” costume, but which could’ve been tenuously linked to the bear costume. As it is, the link between the parade, the animal costumes, and the ensuing sacrifice must be virtually incomprehensible to anyone not already familiar with the original “Wicker Man” film or these rituals in general. No wonder many people, and some critics, have found much unintentional humor in the final reel especially. I can appreciate LaBute’s frequent resort to the omniscient, impersonal (and god-like, or is that bee-like?) high overhead crane shot, especially as it applied to two scenes of Malus in imminent physical danger: when he’s stumbling in panic amongst the beehives, and in his final subjugation by the villagers. But the film would’ve benefitted, I think, from a few long-shots of Malus on his solitary sleuthing around the village (suggesting in its remote P.O.V. that he was under constant, secret surveillance, as he most certainly was), and from at least one long “curtain call” close-up shot of the triumphant villagers as they observed Malus’ immolation (as in the original). Their cruelty is all the more chilling when you witness their joyous celebration up close and personal, instead of from that impersonal and dehumanizing wide-angle long shot, esp. from above. This was particularly unfortunate when they tortured Malus; many critics and viewers found that moment, which should have been agonizing to watch, unexpectedly hilarious, because LaBute’s reliance on an awkwardly dubbed-in voiceover was the only way to know what was happening, and since the sound didn’t even match the visuals in that crucial moment. (We see the men carrying the burlap amongst them, but the view is too distant to see them breaking Malus’ legs, even if they were acting that part out.) In fact, the whole final reel has the desperate feel of a rushed, forced editing job, as if the producers were desperate to reduce the film’s running time to ninety minutes or less (it ended up clocking 87). A final missed opportunity lay in Rowan’s naive betrayal of her father; what if he hurriedly explained to her that he was her long-lost daddy (and very sorry that he hadn’t been able to be a part of her life) – only to learn to his dismay that the prospect of having a man in her life meant absolutely nothing to a little girl raised to dismiss all men as beasts of burden? What kind of an emotional wallop would that scene have packed then?

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[Part 4 (the final installment)]

I also have some lingering questions that could’ve been resolved with better lighting, a more leisurely editing pace, or perhaps if I’d paid closer attention: the girl’s doll at the accident scene – that wasn’t the same doll as Rowan’s, found with a burned face in her grave, was it? We needed a better look at Rowan’s doll. We also could’ve benefitted from a more leisurely camera pan down the list of naturalistic pagan names in the teacher’s grade book, as in the original; I knew what to look for, but many might’ve missed the full significance of that roster.

On the other hand, LaBute (or his art director) deserve credit for a few very nice touches: the honeycombed paths in the beehive field; Willow’s braid, evocative of [gasp!] a cornrig; the well-aged painted detail on the schoolhouse door of a serpent entwined around an egg (a pagan version of the Garden of Eden myth, perhaps?); the ominous William Blake quote on the blackboard, although it was probably impossible to fully make out; the humiliating and no doubt symbolic import of Malus’ being bound up in burlap and then strung up upside-down by his ankles, as if he was a rooster to be slaughtered; the funhouse freak-out shots in Summersisle’s house (the poxed – or is that bee-stung? old man; the naked young woman covered in bees – a pre-sexual maturation rite?) left unexplained but contributing to Malus’ confusion and derangement, as shocking sexual sights further maddened Det. Howie in his door-to-door search; and Sister Honey’s non-sequitur pickup line (“when you leave here, will you take me with you?”) turning out to be a practice run for her visit to the mainland.

Nor am I satisfied with what professional critics of the film have managed to come up with in slamming it, which in my opinion largely consists of a few cheap shots (the same shots, cited over and over) that fail to adequately engage with the film and more alarmingly, in a few cases, with the 1973 original, which a few critics have admitted to never having seen. Many of the critics have identified a virulent misogyny in the film, in his transfer of the islander’s weirdness from paganism to a primary emphasis on his primary innovation, their matriarchal culture. That did indeed pose serious problems to this remake, but less because of his dwelling on sexual politics per se than on his jettisoning most of the pagan references and exposition, while retaining enough of the images from the original (such as the animal costumes in the May Day parade) so as to render his remake risible and incoherent. The critics have especially focused on Malus’ increasingly uncontrolled frenzy to solve the mystery and save the girl – but the only really questionable act was when he punched Sister Beech in the face (to audience approval). Admittedly, that isn’t kosher police behavior; on the other hand, he had cause to arrest her for conspiracy to murder, so really a punch is as good as a slap on the wrist. I also didn’t have a problem with Malus’ “karate-kicking” Sister Honey [an underused Leslee Sobieski] because in that scene she came at him first. Granted, the earlier scene when he heatedly orders Sister Rose [an overly haughty Molly Parker] off her bicycle is unintentionally funny, even though his character had good cause at that point to commandeer the bike. But is the joke on Nic Cage personally, or on his in-over-his-head ChiP, playing at being a proper detective and critically insecure in his authority? From what all the critics are saying, it appears to be on Cage personally, and I think they’re right, although it shouldn’t be that way. We should see this as an ironic moment revealing the fatuous weakness of the character, but because Nic Cage has always played over-the-top characters in his signature broad, apoplectic way, we tend to read this character the same way, as yet another Cage performance, rather than as a hapless, insecure, incompetent cop playing a homicide detective’s game.

Pity, really.