Seeking justice

When his wife is brutally assaulted, New Orleans teacher Will Gerard (Cage) takes the law into his own hands, enlisting the help of a shadowy man called Simon (Pierce) to take revenge. Gerard is promised help in exchange for one small favour... Goateed New Orleans teacher Will Gerard (Nicolas Cage) is agonised because his wife (January Jones) has just been raped. A smooth character (Guy Pearce) offers to have the rapist killed if Will promises a favour. Will signs up to the Faustian bargain by buying two candy bars from a vending machine (not the most ominous of scenes) and finds himself at the mercy of a vigilante conspiracy, which now wants him to be their pet assassin. An overlong thriller, this segues from Death Wish ordinary-man-pushed-too-far business (as if Cage could ever play ordinary) to paranoia movie without engaging with the issues, working as suspense or delivering more than adequate action. An unsuspenseful thriller with shades of Death Wish. Nicolas Cage's return to New Orleans doesn't even have a hallucinatory iguana to recommend it.