I read a really good novel recently called Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway. I enjoy his writing style and inventiveness quite a bit. This novel was excellent because it had a few “game changing” reveals that made my drop. I found myself thinking, “Oh no he didn’t.” When he very much did.

The frequent plot twisting in the novel was reminiscent of the films I love with similar reveals like The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, and The Usual Suspects. Surprisingly that novel and these films share something in common with WATC(H) #90.

Spoiler Alert Starts Now.

For the first half of A Score to Settle (2019) I was pretty bored. I thought, “Not another one of these straight-to-video ho-hum ex-con vengeance procedurals like Dog Eat Dog, or Rage.” But then right about the moment I was going to fall asleep and write it off completely things got a little bit interesting. 

The paradigm shifted just enough for me to second guess my original critique on this film. The film borrows a bit plot-wise from Dying of the Light and Rage but is worlds better after you come to an understanding of what is actually happening (via paradigm shift) vs. what you perceived to be happening earlier at face value. 

The World According to Frank Carver, a very sleep deprived man

Frank Carver (Nicolas Cage), as a young man, takes the fall for Max (Dave Kenneth McKinnon), the leader of a crime syndicate, who kills a man brutally with a baseball bat. Frank is indicted for the crime and spends the next 19 years in prison with a promise that his family will be taken care of. 

Frank gets released from prison because he has fatal sporadic insomnia which can cause hallucinations and if prolonged and untreated can kill the sufferer. Frank is met by his son Joey (Noah Le Gros), a recovering heroin addict, outside the prison. After an awkward and tense reunion, the two return to Frank’s hiding place where he left the bloody bat used to commit the murder (years prior) and a tote bag full of cash. 

Making up for lost time, Frank tries to build bridges with his son (who has had to live without him his whole life) and “make up for lost time”. Using the recovered cash the two check in at a swanky hotel, buy expensive clothes and matching watches, and a sweet sportscar.

The relationship starts pretty rocky for (duh) obvious reasons and the two talk about Frank’s wife / Joey’s mother who died some years ago. 

Joey asks Frank if he plans to get revenge on the men who sent him to prison. Franks claims he has no plans for revenge (which is a bald-faced lie) and only wants to spend time with his son. At night, when Joey sleeps, Frank begins to hunt down the men who let him take the fall Max, Jimmy the Dragon, Tank, and buys a gun so that he can exact his revenge. Franks also gets involved with a prostitute named Simone / Jennifer and has some quality time with Joey, until it becomes apparent to Joey that Frank did have plans to “settle scores” with his old co-workers. 

In the SUPER shocking plot twist, we discover that Joey is in fact already dead (killed by the old gang when he tries to extort them for more drug money) and Frank has been speaking with his son’s ghost (or hallucinating) ever since he got out of prison. 

Frank then proceeds to tracks down Tank (kills him) then finds Max, who is in a coma at a nursing home and has been for some time (spares him), and Jimmy the Dragon (kills him) before realizing that it is his friend “San Quentin” or Q (Benjamin Bratt) that was really behind his son’s death (while Frank was in prison). 

Knowing that this is a “one way” ride to vengeance, Frank gives all of his remaining money to Simone before setting off to exact his final revenge against Q. Frank has a standoff with Q at his daughter’s wedding location and shoots him in the leg (ruining his suit) but ultimately spares his old friend because Frank realizes that all of his grievances are in the past and that the future, for those in the next generation, is really all that matters at this point. Frank has mercy on Q and his daughter, but gets shot by Q’s daughter as he attempts to flee. A police force is waiting outside of the church for Frank. 

Rather than go back to prison (since his insomnia illness will kill him soon enough anyway) Frank chooses suicide by cop and gets blasted a bunch of times in the chest when he goes for a gun. The ghost of Joey meets his father on the steps and they decide to spend a little time together as Frank lies sprawled on the steps of the chapel. 

Plot Twists

In Dying of the Light we have an aging C.I.A. agent with dementia who is losing his mind. Like with debate-night Biden, getting old and losing your mental capabilities is a hard thing to experience and a harder thing to watch happen to someone. Men have a lot of pride and can’t envision a life without their intellectual prowess. Similarly, Frank knows when he leaves the prison that he is up shit’s creek with this fatal insomnia. (I’m not entirely sure this is a real medical condition, but I’m going to assume it is.) So, we are set up from the very beginning with a pretty big clue. The “narrator” or main character is suspect and therefore we should just accept what they experience as truth.

But I missed the clues that he was already dead. Joey seemed real enough as a recovering addict, with his frigid demeanor, gray complexion, and aloof attitude. I bought the fact that he was not really vibing with the father who had abandoned him in favor of criminal loyalties all those years ago. Joey had already been through a lot. But there were clues that maybe Frank was experiencing a different reality all along. Such as:

• Ordering and eating his first meal in the hotel basically alone (Joey, “I haven’t been hungry lately.”)
• Talking to Joey loudly about putting the moves on Simone within eavesdropping distance of her in an empty hallway. (How can she not hear this conversation, I wondered aloud.) 
• Lying to his son about never leaving him again and then leaving him immediately after voicing this. Seemed sus.
• Leaving the hotel without Joey noticing late at night. 
• Returning to the hotel and looking all over the room for Joey and screaming his name maniacally only to have him mysteriously “appear” from somewhere and say, “I went and got us coffees”. 
• Frank seeing the face of his wife often in the face of Simone could have clued me in that he was already hallucinating, but I guess I thought it was somewhat more selective than that.

It wasn’t until Frank shows up at the cemetery to lay flowers at his wife’s grave that the other shoe dropped. He drops some flowers or looks at the headstone for Joseph and I wondered, “Did Joey actually have a brother…” And then I clued in. Ohhhhhh, Joey is already dead. Well-played, very well-played. 

If Not For That

If you remove the plot twist from this film then it’s a very forgettable film, and that’s part of the problem with it. If it’s a film about vengeance and having a conscience or forgetting the past and moving on with your life, there’s entirely too much time spent on this relationship between father and son. I was confused because I was expecting a Mandy level scorched earth policy and I was getting the awkward father-failing-his-children thing (The Weather Man) in large doses. Plus there was kind of this will-he-or-won’t-he dynamic throughout where you weren’t exactly sure that he was going to risk his life to potentially ruin his life just to get vengeance. 

In some ways, I thought it would have been brutal but also somehow fitting if Frank had shot (and killed) Q’s daughter at the wedding. I would have dropped my jaw again if in that intense scene he just turned his gun on her (in her wedding dress) and instantly shot her dead. That would have ripped the soul out of Q and been much more in tha Mandy vein. Instead, he took the “high” ground and tried to just leave, only to get shot by Q’s daughter (which then begs the question of whether or not there is any hope in the next generation breaking the curse of violence) in the back. 

I guess it was the more Hollywood tragic ending seeing him join up with his son in the ghost world, but still. The plot twist made the film make more sense, but it happened so late in the game I had to retrofit my appreciation to the final results. 

First for Nicolas Cage character as Frank Carver 

• Finding a stashed load of cash after a prison stint (did not happen in Stolen)
• Crafting baseball bats
• Taking his (ghost / imagined) child on a bougie shopping spree
• Playing the piano
• Involved in a shootout in front of a nursing home
• Shooting an enemy in the balls before offing them (“They won’t be calling you dragon anymore.”)

Recurrences

• Playing an ex-con (Multiple)
• Taking on the vengeance game again (Vengeance: A Love Story, Drive Angry, Mandy, Dying of the Light, Army of One, Rage, Seeking Justice)
• Having a rocky relationship with his child (Stolen, The Weather Man, Mom & Dad)
• Buying firearms illegally (Lord of War, The Trust)
• Intimidating an elderly / fragile person (Bad Lieutenant: PoCNO)
• Involved in violence at a wedding (Face / Off)
• Dying at the end of a film (The Wicker Man, Bangkok Dangerous, The Humanity Bureau, Between Worlds, too many…Multiple)
• Saying the line, “I don’t deserve…[some good thing]” (Between Worlds)

Quotables

“You look like a man now.”

“After everything they did to us, I’m using every last dollar.” 

“Joey, 6 showerheads. It’s our own personal spa.”

“I’m treating you to the best week of your life.” [Except he’s dead]

“Just droppin in on some old friends.”

“I’m nothing now if not philosophically sound.”

“Raawwwh Raaawwwh. Do you hear that?”

“Scores have to be settled.”

“People are gonna die either way. No way around it. Just a matter of who goes next.”

“Egg-celent.” 

“You think BEEF is an accurate description of what I have for you.”

Conclusion

Using a loose categorization, by my count this is Nicolas Cage’s 8th film that is focused on taking vengeance. That’s about 8% of his films (of those I’ve seen so far). Not an insubstantial amount. Is he starting to get typecast into this role. I would have said so, if not for the plot twist. We know that Cage likes to try new things, and this is the first time he’s played a character who is suffering from sleep-deprived hallucinations. While this only a slight variation from drug-induced (Mandy) hallucinations and emotional / cognitive related meltdown (Dying in the Light) it’s still a new thing he had not tried, until now. 

While I can’t really recommend anyone rush out and watch this film, there are better vengeance related films, the dead ghost son angle made it a slightly more engaging viewing. Leave it to Nicky to surprise us once again.