Does Nicolas Cage choose scripts purely based on where they are located (or being shot)? Does he tend to group them so he can go from one shoot straight into the next with as little travel as possible? This is a theory based on very little research or evidence, but I suspect that he does.

We know that he has homes in New Orleans and in Las Vegas, and perhaps unsurprisingly he has filmed many movies that were set in those locations. 

Lately, it seems  that he is on a South American kick. Running with the Devil had him galavanting all over central and south America. The current WATC(H) #93 Kill Chain has him back in Colombia, and the next film we will review, Primal, had him catching jaguars in Brazil. All of these were released in 2019. Coincidence? Maybe. But maybe not.

Unfortunately, these three films (with at least a major part of the action set in south American locations) all feed into the stereotype: South America is a drug- and crime-infested place where the likelihood of death is pretty high. Running with the Devil covered the drug cartel and trafficking problem in plenty of detail. In Kill Chain we get to seethe violent crime and corruption that runs amok in Colombia’s dark underworld. The film is not really about Colombia per se, but it provides the dark backdrop to the world of mercenaries, assassins, thieves, and criminal syndicates.

Let’s get things started with a summary.

The World According to Araña (spoilers ahead)

When the film opens, an older man (called Old Sniper in the credits) Markham (Enrico Colantoni)  is holed up in a dank room in the Hotel Del Franco in a sketchy neighborhood in Colombia. He is contracted to kill someone on the street and is communicating with his unnamed boss over cell phone. But as he cases the situation through his sniper scope, it turns out his employer has sent another assassin Sanchez (Eddie Martinez) to actually target and kill him. He’s the actual target.

The Old Sniper gets shot and the Sanchez flees and collects his payment of diamonds from an abandoned car where the employer has left them. But before he can leave the area with the earnings, two policemen stop him and arrest him for possessing a weapon. They also discover the diamonds. Sanchez offers money to whichever policeman turns on the other which causes the two to argue. One of the policeman, Lance Ericson (Ryan Kwanten) shoots and kills Sanchez which angers his partner, Miguel (Jhon Bedoya).

Now distrusting one another, Lance and Miguel turn on each other and try to kill each other via a shootout inside the police vehicle. Lance wins and brings the money to his girlfriend, Renata (Anabelle Acosta) at some kind of weird abandoned warehouse / flophouse.

Renata has a past history with the local crime lord, called in the credits The Very Bad Woman (Angie Cepeda), who is chasing her for money Renata has stolen from here. The VBW shows up at the flophouse with her crew of thugs. 

Renata escapes, but Lance gets killed, and Renata hijacks a ride to a hotel which she believes is owned by her friend Franco where she hopes to meet with a man named Araña (Nicolas Cage) who will give her a new passport and papers so she can flee the country. 

When she arrives, Franco is not there, but a new man is running the hotel. It’s actually Araña, but since she’s never met him before she doesn’t know this. He doesn’t offer her any information about his true identity. Instead he gives her a room and tells her that he won the hotel in a bet with Franco. Renata and Araña get busy, and she offers to run away with him, but he tells her he can’t run anywhere at the moment. 

Eventually The Very Bad Woman and her Lieutenant Thug show up at the hotel looking for Renata. The Very Bad Woman has an argument with Renata while Araña has a conversation and a drink with LT. 

LT is pretty cocky with Araña until he realizes he’s been drinking poison and then he dies. Renata brutally kills The Very Bad Woman by stabbing her a million times.

Shortly after the murder, two new assassins show up at the hotel and begin questioning Araña as they are looking for Franco (and him). Araña is cagey about what is going on and hides the fact that that Renata and a dead woman are upstairs. He is also not forthcoming about Franco until he realizes who they are and why they’ve come (i.e. to kill him.) He offers to tell them a story and then gives the backstory on his time working for the same organization as these two as mercenaries. 

The Backstory: 

Araña and Franco are hired by the “organization” as Private Military Contractors / mercenaries who worked a job in Cameroon getting “blood diamonds”. Franco was a Ranger and Araña was a truck driver who learned the trade from Franco. Araña says they did the government’s dirty work for them. Delivered money for different assignments as guns for hire. A deal in Mexico went bad and they were asked to “clean it up” by killing a truckful of young girls who were supposed to be trafficked. 

Instead Franco and Araña kept the money, set the girls loose, and fled to Colombia to hide out. The organization sent Sanchez (killed earlier in the film by Lance) to “finish the job” in Mexico which he does cause he’s a sicko. Franco adopts one of the girls though from the Mexico deal and raises her as his own. But as a teenager she rebels against her dad, leaves home and gets picked up with drugs by the corrupt cops (Miguel / Lance) and her body parts are later found in a field. Araña feels guilt because he didn’t stop Franco’s daughter from leaving and he didn’t stop Franco from going after the corrupt cops. Franco didn’t understand that the cops are on the payroll of the Very Bad Woman who seizes Franco and beats him to death.  

So, Araña, who name means Spider, has caught all of the guilty parties in his web of orchestrated revenge. He’s avenged Franco / Franco’s daughter through the deaths of The Very Bad Woman, her Thug, the corrupt policeman Miguel / Lance,  and the assassins sent to kill the girls in Mexico, Sanchez and (ta-da!) Markham. As he ends his story, the two assassins sent to kill him decide it’s time to finish their job, but he tells them he’s been telling this whole story for someone else’s benefit, Renata. So that she can escape (as she now knows he is Araña) Araña has a shootout with the two assassins and both die. Returning to the room where Markham was shot, we discover that he is still alive, but badly wounded. He admits that he didn’t take part in killing the girls in Mexico, but Araña asserts that he “didn’t stop it” either. Araña reluctantly agrees to try and help Markham’s daughter escape since the next assassins will likely be after her now, too, and then kills Markham (at his request). 

Retribution Loop

This film was more watchable than some of Nicolas Cage’s vengeance films because it really was a “kill chain”, one death leads to the next and to the next. At first the picture and plot is unclear and it slowly unfolds and takes shape. It is a film that also loops in on itself (like an intertwined chain). 

For example, the film actually starts with the two new assassins entering Franco’s hotel looking for the two men they must kill. Araña has already killed the Thug with poison and Renata has killed the Very Bad Woman, but we don’t know that yet, and we don’t know who these two main characters are yet either. A guy who doesn’t seem to really be the owner of the hotel and a woman covered in blood watching from the shadows. 

We know something bad went down, but the details have to be revealed to us. 

So then Araña begins to tell the story. The film starts in the middle of the action with this scene, and then plays the night through from the beginning so we get to see each of the steps (kills) in the process play out (starts at the hotel and ends at the hotel) until the two assassins show up again (for the viewer) and get Araña’s backstory straight from him. Then the film moves forward to the last link in the chain, the death of Markham. 

Although Araña’s plot had various options, “plan b and plan c”, he was confident that he had stitched together a web that would trap all of the guilty parties. And he was correct. Although the plan was not for him to survive the journey himself, he must now do so in order to protect Markham’s daughter (an innocent) from harm.  

Role Fit

I thought this was a pretty good role fit for Nicolas Cage. He’s a morally complex killer who regrets his past decisions and is trying to rectify them–using the relative language and violence of that mercenary world. I enjoyed the pretense and deception and cold vengeance he dealt out–especially with the two worst characters, the Thug and the Mean Assassin (Pedro Calva). You sympathize with Markham (and with Araña) but you also feel that they are getting what they deserve for the live’s they have chosen. 

Other Oddities / Things of Note

• The seduction scene was kind of weird. Renata is probably about 20-30 years younger than Araña (Nicky) and seducing him just seemed strange to me. I got even more disturbed when I was thinking that she was actually Franco’s daughter returned, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She was just a prostitute or someone who had worked for The Very Bad Woman who also happened to run into Miguel / Lance (I guess). 
• I don’t speak Spanish, but I’ve heard a lot of it. Nicolas Cage’s Espanol is not great. But maybe that was intentional? 
• Booby trapping the gun that the Mean Assassin used was a pro move. Not only did it cause shrapnel to go right into the guy’s eyes, but it was just another indicator that the guy was a douche who didn’t know what he was doing.
• A little factoid or pattern I’ve gathered: Nicolas Cage characters who are hardcore military are also usually not necessarily trained killers. In this film he was a “driver” in the military. In other films he has been a military mechanic or weapons expert or truck driver. Not sure why this is so; I guess it kind of plays into the I’m really-a-lover-not-a-fighter motif. And yet he still beats their ass and shoots ‘em dead.

Firsts for Nicolas Cage as Araña (Spanish for Spider)

• Speaking Spanish (poorly)
• Neck scar
• Booby trapping a gun
• Poisoning someone
• Having a Spanish name

Recurrences

• Paid assassin / mercenary (Bangkok Dangerous)
• Hotel manager / owner (Looking Glass)
• Being in a film set in Colombia (Running With the Devil)
• In a film that’s plot centered around vengeance (Multiple ~11 films)
• Bearded (Multiple)
• Smoking (Multiple)
• Consorting with prostitutes (Multiple)
• Getting slapped hard by a woman (Multiple)

Quotables

“Low overhead. Occasional opportunity.”

“You know where you’re standing, that’s for employees only.”

“Bad neighborhood.”
“Clerk, bartender, security guard, owner.”

“I won this place in a poker game.”

“That’s not going to make me move any faster.” [Snarkily to the Thug ringing the lobby bell annoyingly.]

“Think it’s the only trick I know.”

“I wasn’t waiting to start.” [Savage spider-like two-plays ahead as he watches Thug die of his poisoning.]

“Jesus Christ. You are fucking dim.”

“It’s abstract to you! It’s not staring at a CAGE full of little girls, and knowing light them on fire, or never go home.”

“NAKED. TORTURED. CUT. INTO. PIECES.”

“Well, let’s just say, I’ve had a good meal, and I’m not hungry anymore.”

“In my day a professional wouldn’t use a strange gun without checking it first.”?”

“Oh, I think you’ve met some Araña’s in your time; probably some Snakes and Lobos, too.”

“I’ll bill your room.”

“I’m not delusional enough to think you find me irresistible.” 

Conclusion

I’ll leave this film with some wise (if foreboding) words from Araña “Well, let’s just say, I’ve had a good meal, and I’m not hungry anymore.” This low-budget B-movie did leave me satisfied. Playing the long-con, Araña took care of all his enemies in a single night. That’s some black widow bad assery stuff right there. Everyone who bought the farm had it coming to them, and it was a clever way to show how a kill chain can be executed in a highly proficient way. So far so good on the South American films. We’ll see how things go in the next one when Nicolas Cage does a little bit of big game animal poaching and smuggling in Primal.