The hungry rabbit jumps, eh?

Justice (aka Seeking Justice)

(2011)

Another routine but preposterous Nicolas Cage thriller. Nic's playing another beleaguered everyman type, not his forte, embroiling himself in a premise not a million miles from Strangers on a Train. To compare Roger Donaldson's film with Hitchcock is to give it far too much credit, though.

Following the brutal rape of his wife, Cage meets Simon (Guy Pearce, enjoying playing the heavy) who offers to bring justice to the man responsible in return for a favour at some point in the future. When it comes time to collect, there are predictably fraught results.

Donaldson keeps the momentum up, in his usual accomplished but journeyman way, but the script is a mess of clichés and it looks like some pruning has occurred (Jennifer Carpenter features for less than 5 minutes). The New Orleans setting seems relevant only because characters keeping referencing that this is where they are. The strongest aspect is probably the escalating paranoia of just who is part of Simon's organisation and how widespread it is, but even that feels a bit tired.

**1/2

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Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .

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Duffy. That old tangerine hipster.

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I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

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The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

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Just wait. They’ll start listing side effects like the credits at the end of a movie.

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