The film “Echoes of the Past” with Nicolas Cage in the title role was released in Russia.
This is the first western actor in his career in which he starred. It’s hard to say that Cage has always been present in good projects – he had many failures over time, but the last film featuring The Unbearable Weight of Great Talent gave hope for rectifying the situation.
We have already reviewed the novelty and are in a hurry to share our impressions. Unfortunately, nothing good will come of it this time.
old old wild west
Occasionally in the Western genre you can find good works for 20 years. They seem to have filmed everything that was possible – and from different angles.
Even their examples are plus or minus similar. Only fresh ideas will help here, like the HBO series Westworld in the first two seasons. Remain unused in the general background.
What is the movie about: Dick-famous bounty hunter Colton Briggs met the love of his life and grew into an exemplary family man. However, the bandit’s past “merits” come to light when the son of the man he killed falls on his wife.
A widower and single father, Colton takes up arms again and lets his teenage daughter become his partner in the fight against the head of the bandits.
The plot is as simple as three pennies. He completely succumbs to the canons of the genre and follows them without stepping back.
In places, according to the assessment of logic and humor (although it has not been proven here), the picture reaches the level of the Lone Ranger, and in some episodes the level of seriousness reaches the Hateful Eight. However, neither in the first nor in the second case, the picture is not able to give at least something somewhat adequate.
Even the family drama underlying the novelty, the authors do not want to manipulate in any way. They just say: here is a father and daughter – sympathize with them and imbue them with their tandem, but we will not reveal them to you, this simple dummy.
The transformation takes place only at Colton himself (Nicolas Cage). And then it is done to the maximum clumsilylike the rest of the story as a whole. A sociopathic person who fails to recognize his mistakes and change is eventually transformed by a magical white finger.
Although you don’t expect revelations from a western, at least I would like to see Cage in a new role for himself. But even here the authors decided not to bother. In this film, the actor not only sticks to an eternally severe and serious image, he is trite shows no emotion at all. Doesn’t even try. It can be seen that Cage took on this role only for the sake of money, so he works out all 1.5 hours of timing his salary – no more.
The script recovers from all files. In principle, there was no other expectation: the director of mediocre militants with Bruce Willis, Brett Donohoe, is not famous for his impressive projects. And then he decided not just his old-fashioned movie, but on business did immediately on release. He does not use the classic techniques for the genre, but introduces a modern manner of observation, while the installation is used completely for this inappropriate.
Everything here is bad
The overall staging, picture, sound design, story – everything is done at a mediocre level “just to win back the money.”
Directors did not try to restore, she corny did not meet, despite the various decorations, of which there are not so many here. Shootings here can be counted on the fingers of one hand (and this is something in a western!), There are almost no dynamics, exposition and obligatory lowing at the end.
The only thing to hold on to is the opening between the heads of Keijoy and Armstrong. And then they turn out to be catastrophically small, that at least something stands out in this faded operation. The main villain is as caricatured as possible, the supporting actors replay (and the first one, too, if they are not too lazy), and the overall picture looks unreal and absurd.
With special attention, there can’t even be music, they’re just about nothing.
Don’t waste your time on this
“Echoes of the Past” is a very mediocre movie, in which there is nothing at least somewhat interesting.
In 1.5 hours, you will most likely get bored and watch the time. I hope that in the future we will see Nicolas Cage in more adequate films. It’s not even worth paying attention to.
Source: Iphones RU
