Prisoners of the Ghostland
Over the course of the years, Nicolas Cage has delighted his many fans with some of the craziest and boldest movies ever made. But for every Mandy (2018), Wild at Heart (1990) and even Color Out of Space (2020) there are some terrible movies as well, such as the infamous remake of The Wicker Man (2006) or Ghost Rider (2007). In fact, when Nicholas Cage is paired with a great filmmaker the result is rarely underwhelming. So a collaboration with Sion Sono sounded like a match made in heaven, given the peculiar filmmaking style that characterised the prolific career of the Japanese director.
Having its world premere at the Sundance Film Festival, Prisoners of the Ghostland is the first English-language feature from Sion Sono. The film had a troubled production, as the health conditions of Sono played a huge role: after having a heart attack, he couldn’t fly away to Mexico where the shooting was supposed to happen, so production was moved to Japan to support the filmmaker. What is Prisoners of the Ghostland about? Describing a Sion Sono movie is never an easy task given the amount of characters, themes and the bizzarre world the director tries to craft. The movie follows an unnamed character, Hero (Nicholas Cage), who is spending his years in jail after a failed bank robbery. Everything changes when The Governor (a rather campy Bill Moseley), a wealthy warlord, decides to free him at one condition: Hero has five days to find Berenice (an underused Sofia Boutella), the adopted granddaughter of The Governor who has gone missing. But why are the five days deadline so important for Hero? The man has to wear a leather jacket that isn’t “the symbol of individuality and belief in personal freedom” but a device that will self-destruct after that brief period of time. During his journey, Hero finds himself in the Ghostland, a Mad Max-esque dystopic village – “a land of no escape, only endurance and survival” – where people have to “keep time from moving” or transform young girls into mannequins in order to free and purify them.
Just from this premise, the audience could expect a wild and ambitious experience, but the result is a mixed bag unfortunately; the whole aspect of the Ghostland is quite frustrating, since the previously mentioned themes are never explored in-depth and there was so much potential within them. The final sequences are quite underwhelming as well, especially if compared to Red Post on Escher Street or the pure madness of the last 15 minutes of Why Don’t You Play In Hell?. Having said that, Prisoners of the Ghostland is not a bad movie – it’s actually pretty entertaining and shows, once again, the brilliant aesthetic touch from Sono, such as the use of music, costumes and the color palette adopted. The use of Elvis Presley’s “Don’t” to introduce Cage’s character in jail is simply an amazing choice, and the same can be said for the adoption of Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” in a choreographed battle sequence where Yasujiro (the undefeated hitman of The Governor, played by TAK∴) has to battle different samurais.
Nicholas Cage delivers another crazy yet calibrated turn, in that the actor has his moments where he fully embraces the madness around the movie – the “one arm and one... TESTICOOOLE” scene will be remembered for a long time – but at the same time Cage is able to find a more subdued approach in other scenes, like the one where Hero remembers the trauma of the failed bank robbery. TAK∴, meanwhile, is terrific in his portrayal of the quiet and almost silent samurai Yasujiro, who has a conflicted moral towards his boss, The Governor, but he would do anything to keep the undefeated status he has earned.
Usual fans of Sion Sono will probably be a little disappointed with the movie and Prisoner of the Ghostland feels like a minor work from the Japanese filmmaker, but nevertheless, it is still a very entertaining movie and worth checking out just to witness a black leather suited Nicholas Cage who battles samurai screaming in pain for the lack of a testicul. Does it sound bizarre? Probably, but if you consider that Sion Sono’s most known movie, Love Exposure, is a 4-hour odyssey about a young boy who stealthily takes photographs up women's skirts, Prisoners of the Ghostland will likely seem a “normal” movie in comparison.