Leofwine_draca
DYING OF THE LIGHT is a disappointingly cheap and low key thriller from writer/director Paul Schrader, who once wowed audiences with his work on TAXI DRIVER and CAT PEOPLE back in the day. He seems to have fallen a long way since then. The film was shot in Romania and features a slumming-it Nicolas Cage who plays a CIA agent haunted by memories of torture at the hands of an Arab terrorist in years past. When he finds said terrorist is back on the scene, Cage goes gunning for him. Sadly, all of this jumbled film doesn't really add up to much. You get a wasted Anton Yelchin in a role so small as to be negligible and a handful of action bits (mainly taking the form of violent shoot outs) as well as repeated flashbacks to a scene of violent torture. The script fails to rise from the doldrums and seems intent on dishing out cliche after cliche rather than trying anything new. Worst of all, there's none of the suspense or tension expected from this genre; a film made on autopilot, then.
dennisgcarrier
A largely boring script. Slow moving and slow developing. Melodramatic. Extremely dark. Most people will lament the time lost. And the thing with the ear was getting silly. Cage's character has a mangled ear from being cut with wire cutters while he was being tortured. But when he does undercover work in disguise his make-up guy is able to miraculously fix that with prosthetic make-up. Then he is able to change back. It's ridiculous. That ear would need plastic surgery to make it look that good. I just started laughing at that point. It makes you wonder what kind of lousy medical insurance CIA agents would have if they couldn't fix the agent's ear years after the incident. What, they let him leave the hospital like that? Somebody get a needle and thread, for Pete's sake.
adamcarter-63372
This film is written and directed by one of my favorite filmmakers working today, Paul Schrader. He's most famous for writing Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. However, he also wrote Bringing Out the Dead and directed Dog Eat Dog which I both love and both star Nicolas Cage. The weird thing is that neither Paul Schrader or Nic Cage wants you to see this movie. This is because the Dying of the LIght was taken away from the filmmakers and re-edited by the producers without Paul Scharders approval. He claims that he was literally locked out of the editing room while producers edited the film to their liking. There are points in this film where it truly shows. The version we got is so on and off. There were scenes where I was completely invested in what was unfolding in front of me and other scenes where it was so dull that I just wanted to pass out. The film has great ideas, but it just doesn't do enough with them and when it does something good, the next scene undoes it. At the end of the film, something happens which I found exceptionally impactful and powerful and could have been a great ending, but the next scene completely stabs us in the back and reverses that decision.The editing is unpleasantly sloppy in places which is most apparent during a brief action sequence halfway through the movie. The main character is also fascinating and while Nicolas Cage does a great job, he just isn't explored enough.There is a great film here but it just doesn't make it's way to the surface. What is at the surface is a strange mixture of great and bad. Some scenes in this film or fantastic and some are trash. I hope Paul Schrader's version of the film gets released because I'm positive it is much better than what we got here.
Paul Magne Haakonsen
As with, well let's be honest, all of Nicolas Cage movies, then I am sitting down to watch the movie with very little expectations, because there is an overshadowing tendency that his movies turn out to be generic and cut from overly used recipes. And should it turn out to be that particular movie that surprises, once in a blue moon, then it is that much more pleasant to watch.However, "Dying of the Light" is one of those types of movies that has potential to be interesting, but it was squandered at the hands of director Paul Schrader. The movie turned out to be a very predictable and thus very generic movie for the thriller/drama genre.The acting in the movie was as to be expected. You have your ever-present single facial expression and random outbursts of loud voicing from Nicolas Cage. And he seemed like a fish out of water in this movie, trying to portray a government employee diagnosed with a debilitating mental illness.The movie follows a generic script and storyline, which has been seen and used in countless other movies prior to this 2014 movie. As such, then there is very little new to be had for the audience that actually do take the time to sit down and watch "Dying of the Light". And while it was scripted, then the movie also progressed way too fast, which essentially made the movie seemed forced and shallow.You know what you are getting yourself into here if you take a minute to read the synopsis, and with the thought of it being another one of the assembly line produced Nicolas Cage movies. And I can't claim to say that this particular movie is outstanding from the numerous other movies that Nicolas Cage stars in. As such, then I am rating "Dying of the Light" a mere four out of ten stars.
AD
