THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
DIRECTOR: Paul Schrader
CAST: Nicolas Cage and |Alexander Karim
CLASSIFICATION: 18 LV
RUNNING TIME: 92 minutes
RATING: **
Late in his career, the great American writer-director Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, American Gigolo) is being shunted off into the twilight world of glorified TV movies.
These are available to download the moment they appear in cinemas and are invariably edited by his producers without his approval.
Dying of the Light is very clunky in parts and owes an obvious debt to the Belgian thriller The Alzheimer Case (The Memory of a Killer). However, like all Schrader films, it also has plenty of provocative and original moments that hint at the movie it might have been.
Nicolas Cage plays Evan Lake, a greying, veteran CIA agent still traumatised by an incident two decades before, in which he was held prisoner and tortured by Islamist terrorist Muhammad Banir (Karim). He has been desk-bound ever since. None of his colleagues share his conviction that Banir is still alive.
Early in the film, we learn he has “frontotemporal dementia”. His mind is going and he is prey to violent mood swings. He is in a state of near despair about scandal and incompetence at the CIA. Banir, hiding in Kenya, is suffering from a blood disease that will soon kill him.
Schrader seems to relish the idea of having two adversaries who are so infirm locked together in a battle that seems pointless given that neither will live long anyway. In pursuing his old torturer, Lake is looking for catharsis but also acting out of a sense of patriotic duty.
The plotting doesn’t make sense, but Cage gives a flamboyant and uneven performance as the stubborn old agent. One moment, he seems risible. The next, he’ll bring pathos and ferocity to his part as a character raging against his condition and “desperate to do something worth remembering with what is left of my time”. – The Independent
If you liked Three Days to Kill or Rage, you will like this.