Well, I have finally arrived at the last Nicolas Cage movie released in 2012, and this is an appropriate ending to an uncharacteristic lull in the WATC(H).  I’m not suggesting that this time period of 2011-2012 was the worst of Cage’s career, but representatively, the six movies that Cage released during this span were mostly unremarkable in my opinion (Season of the Witch, Drive Angry, Seeking Justice, Trespass, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and Stolen). There were a few shining moments and meme-worthy scenes, but overall, these movies are easily forgotten.

Of the six, I think Stolen was the most laughable of the lot. So hopefully 2013 and beyond will bring some better roles, scripts, and character for Mr. Cage. But in the meantime here’s the…

The World According to Taken

The movie Taken (2008) starring Liam Neeson was Stolen (2012) by Nicolas Cage, or rather, the director Simon West. Although I’ve never seen Taken it is one of those films that has made its way into the collective conscious of our current pop culture. Liam Neeson plays a CIA agent who is “a man with a particular set of skills” which I’m assuming means he has weapons, contacts, money, and violence at his disposal, and he is prepared to use those skills to free his daughter from a kidnapping in Paris. This ransom movie did well in the box office (I think) and cemented a franchise for Neeson. 

Stolen, however, is a thinly veiled rip-off of Taken. The movie tries to play to Cage’s dark horse tendencies. Instead of a CIA agent, Cage plays Will Montgomery, a mastermind thief who leads a crew of robbers on a New Orleans bank heist. The heist goes south when the FBI shows up, and when Will and his slightly eradicate partner Vincent (Josh Lucas) have creative differences on whether to use or not use violence to achieve their ends. Will shoots Vincent in the leg (to prevent him from killing a defenseless janitor), but Will gets left behind in the mayhem to be captured by the cops while he is still holding more than $10M in cash. 

The money goes missing and Will goes to prison, and Vincent and the rest of the gang are left penniless (and without prospects or a leader) even though they do avoid jail time. When Will returns from prison eight years later, his teenage daughter is immediately kidnapped by Vincent, who has gone from a sorta to mostly deranged one-legged taxi driver by this point. Will tries to convince Vincent and the FBI that he “burned the money” and doesn’t have it anymore, but no one believes him. The rest of the movie is a cat-chasing-mouse beat-the-buzzer action film where the FBI try to catch up with Will while Will tries to catch up with Vincent who has his Will’s daughter in the trunk of his cab. The backdrop is Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which makes traffic horrible and masks prevalent. 

To get Vincent his $10M dollars back, Will chases down remnants of the “old crew” (much like Gone In 60 Seconds) to rob the same bank he robbed eight years earlier, but this time he steals 10M in melted gold bars.If I’d seen Taken I could make some really good comparisons / contrasts and show how Stolen was a blatantly plagiarized (if slightly altered) version of the original film, but alas, I have not seen it. So I’m just going to assume.

Some of the worst movies Nicolas Cage has been in so far have been unapologetic remakes or copies of previous box-office successes (e.g. Fire Birds, The Ant Bully) and Stolen just continues that tradition. The other movies that I’ve liked the least (excluding Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans) have all been set in the Big Easy (e.g. Sonny, Zandalee, Seeking Justice). I don’t know what it is about New Orleans and remakes, but this seems to be the overlapping middle slice of the Venn diagram of bad for me.

Just Dumb and Dumber

The list of dumb things in this film is pretty infinite, but here’s a few of the highlights that will make you LOL upon even a cursory consideration of their plausibility or trial subscription to your suspension of disbelief:

• Will is supposedly a huge Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) fan and he listens to their music like a hype track before his robberies. I have nothing against CCR, but the fact that Will’s character is known for his love of 60s rock, and that the FBI uses this to identify his “calling card” during a stakeout makes this seem so absurdly stupid. The band gets mentioned at various times throughout the film; they’re not even from New Orleans, but whatever.
• Will burns the money?!? What was his reasoning for this? Sure he didn’t have much time or opportunity to make other arrangements. Rationale: if he’s caught with the money, the prison sentence would be longer supposedly. I’m not sure I buy it. Since the plot hinges on him having the $10M it would seem wise to keep the fate of the money ambiguous for as long as possible. Does he or doesn’t he? But that’s not what happens. We find out right away that Will burned the money, rather than hide it or attempt to, and that story never changes.
• Will speaks Swedish perhaps learned from the one female and loyal member of his crew, Riley Jeffers (Malin Akerman). We find out halfway through the movies that she is Swedish. OK? This came out of nowhere, and just made so little sense to me.  

• Tim Harland (Danny Huston) is the FBI director who is obsessed with catching Will even after he has caught him. He is so obsessed in fact, he considers it one of the most meaningful events of his life right after getting married and having kids. Harland stalks Will after prison and by the end of the movie is actually a huge Will Montgomery fan. It’s weird. Even weirder is the huge budget the FBI must have invested in trying to catch Will. There was always a 5 car SUV entourage and SWAT team that went out fo track down every lead–whether it was asking a few questions of a taxi company or blowing the doors off a bank that was being robbed. 

• Vincent, the weird villain who fakes his own death by cutting off his fingers that were used for fingerprinting, calls Will “Gom”. Of all the ways to abbreviate or nickname a guy named Will, why “gom”? Will isn’t short enough? How about Willie? Or Montie? Nope. We’re going with “gom” right there in the middle of the word Montgomery.
• Child actors have the worst job in the world. If they do well, they get famous and are forever dysfunctional due to the fame status that no human should have to live under. If they do poorly, their performance lives on in infamy for as long as the movie does. Will’s daughter Alison (played by Sami Gayle) is a bad actress. It’s probably her age, maybe her direction, or just a really shitty script, but every scene she is in is cringy. I don’t blame her. She’s just a teenager with a bad haircut, but my goodness it’s hard to watch. 

• The poor dumb Australian tourist who gets the crap beat out of him by Vincent. Crikey.
• The “Jason Never Dies” scene at the end of the movie where Vincent just keeps coming back from presumed death to try and kill Will and Alison–after he’s already been burned, stabbed, dismembered, and drowned. I kept waiting for Freddy Kreuger to just come popping out of the water to take on Jason/Vincent/Will for one last jump scare. It probably got cut in the last edit. 
• Melting the gold through the floor of the bank, then tossing it into a duffle bag. Yeah, you read that right. Will and Riley return to the bank he robbed 8 years before, via an underground passageway, and use welding equipment to burn through the concrete floor and melt gold bars which ooze down into a retention pond (of some kind). Was it faster to melt the gold than just reach up and grab the bars? Seems like a very convoluted process and subject to more problems than any of the robbery scenes we’ve seen in any Nicolas Cage movie to date. I think H.I. Mcdonnough could have probably come up with a better scheme that involved an unloaded gun and a pantyhose on his head than this crazy plan. 
• The ferry escape scene where the FBI gets fooled by Riley driving in a truck with a mannequin that looks like Will. I don’t need to explain this one. It’s as dumb as it sounds.
• Will breaks (or dislocates) his own thumb to escape handcuffs, then survives a car crash (that he caused) then makes a phone call, grimaces, and relocates / fixes his thumb while talking on the phone and running through a crowd of Mardi Gras paraders. He has no evident pain, and no issues holding anything with hand for the remainder of the film. What kind of trick thumb does this guy have?

The Highlight

The best part of this movie was a minor role–the lisping Cajun taxi dispatcher, Lefleur (Dan Braverman). I wish I could find a video clip on Youtube, but none seem to pop up from some basic searches. He’s pretty funny. The only comedic relief and entertainment to be had in Stolen. Sorry Nic.

Firsts for Nicolas Cage as Will “Gom” Montgomery

• A diamond thief
• Mentioning the care bears
• Use duffle bag full of cash as a projectile to knock out a cop
• Steals a police car
• Knocks out two FBI agents in an elevator to steal their ID badge
• Gets hit by a cab
• Steals a ride on a Mardi Gras parade car / float
• Speaks Swedish
• Impaling a Jason-like villain with a crowbar and then sending him to the bottom of a lake in the trunk of a car. 

Recurrences

• Setting in New Orleans (Zandalee, Sonny, Bad Lieutenant PoCNO, Seeking Justice)
• Sent to prison (Con Air, Raising Arizona, Face/Off, Wild at Heart)
• In a tenuous parental relationship (Raising Arizona, Matchstick Men, The Family Man, The Weather Man, Drive Angry)
• Buys a stuffed animal for his child after his prison sentence (Con Air, Wild at Heart)
• Wearing welding style goggles (G-Force)

Quotables

“When I get home, I’m going to make you those happy face [POINTING] PANCAKES that you love so much. I love you, baby.”

“Stay focused.”

“Put it down. No homicide!”

“I’m not the squirrel playing with his nuts here, Harland. I don’t have the money.”

“Hallelujah, man, you’re alive.”

“You touch her, and I’ll take you down to the levy, and kick your fuckin’ ass!”

“I burned the cash.”

“You tell me where she is or so help me, God, I’ll blow your lunch all over this carpet.” 

Conclusion:

The main crime of the movie Stolen is that it stole one hour and thirty six minutes of my life. (Actually double that since I watched it twice.) It also probably stole some brain cells that could have been put to better use. I know it was worth something because Nicolas Cage was in it, but it was laughably bad. If you want to watch a movie where a guy uses every means necessary to save his daughter from kidnappers, I recommend that you watch Taken not Stolen. I haven’t seen the Neeson movie firsthand, but it has to be better than this. It just has to.

(A short plea to Nicolas: Nicolas, please, please, please start making better movies again…these are starting to get painful. Love, a true fan.)

And what’s next on the board? The Croods.  🤬