Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)
(On Cable TV, December 2021) There’s wild and there’s Nicolas Cage wild, but few filmmakers can actually deliver a film that matches Nicolas Cage wild. For better or for worse, that’s not the case for Japanese auteur Sion Sono, who concocts in Prisoners of the Ghostland a cyberpunk western fever dream that manages to be crazier than Cage himself. The worldbuilding is a nonsensical blend of nuclear catastrophe, Japanese iconography, American Wild West conventions and shiny expensive cars. It’s not meant to make sense — it’s meant to look cool and distinctive, and it certainly achieves that objective. The flip side of that is that if you’re looking for narrative substance to go along with Nicolas Cage screaming at Wild West Yazukas, you’re likely to be disappointed. This is a film that becomes increasingly ludicrous while explaining the constrained facets of its pocket universe where everyone knows everyone from ten years ago, and where Western tropes easily outweigh any attempts to make sense. It’s wild, but it’s also curiously forgettable as well: while Cage is in fine form, and Sofia Boutella improves the film like she usually does, the intensity of the images fades to nothing once the credits roll. It feels a bit long and repetitive once the sheen of its first wacky moments has passed. There’s probably an object lesson here — I suspect that we’re going to talk about Cage’s performance in Mandy long after Prisoners of the Ghostland memories fade away, and it’s a demonstration of how wildness should come accompanied by some substance in order to mean anything.
