In this film, the terrorist Banner appears to get his life back on track. Now Lake seems to be mired in embarking on a perilous mission to confront Banner across continents and everywhere.
A weirdly misshapen, fitfully intriguing depiction of one man's wayward quest for justice, plainly compromised in ways that only a director's cut could properly illuminate.
Nicolas Cage wigs out again as an unhinged CIA agent in this espionage thriller, but this time it's his ragged prosthetic ear rather than his hairpiece that grabs the viewer's attention.
It plays out as a more or less conventional direct-to-video-style thriller, distinguished by a handful of subtexts and images that might have been developed in a different version, but here register as mere quirks.
On a commercial level, "Dying of the Light" sometimes plays as just another high-concept vehicle for a comically overacting Mr. Cage. But Mr. Schrader's vision is strong enough to rage against the hackier calculations.
Cage's loop-di-loop performance, the movie's surviving asset, at least hints at the themes of institutional illness and mortal decline that must have fascinated Schrader.
"Dying of the Light" is a shrill and bombastic slog, with an all-over-the-map collection of tones that never cohere into a credible or compelling vision.
