Review of the film ‘Prisoners of the Ghostland’ (2021)

Nicolas Cage is a sub-genre on its own – he has made a name for himself as the actor of Excess, usually preferring action films where he is free to show his repertory of crazy faces. Could there be a film excessive enough so Cage would fit right in?

‘Prisoners of the Ghostland’ is the answer to that question. An hallucination rather than a film, the creation of Sion Sono leaves aside all containment. The settings are as much full of colour as empty of coherence. Characters are as much extravagant as inexplicable. It can be defined as a experience in which the spectator gradually abandons all hope of the story making sense. It begins with a bank robbery – a familiar setting for the spectator. But then the bank is shown to be at Samurai Town, a town shared by samurai and cowboys and ruled by the Governor. Wait, what? Then the action goes into the Ghostland, a post-apocalyptical land polluted by radioactivity – but instead of a Mad Max-like scenario, we get a bizarre place where women are turned into mannequins by having pottery fragments cover their faces. Wait, wouldn’t that prevent them from eating, drinking or even breathing? Attempts to leave the Ghostland will fail because mysterious figures will appear with a blinding light and… that’s it. Wait, have you tried using sunglasses? Objective achieved: Cage’s usual, crazy-faced character appears to be the most ordinary character in the film.

The plot is about the Governor’s niece running away from Samurai Town into the Ghostland – and then the Governor offering the convicted protagonist mercy in exchange of going to the Ghostland and bringing back the niece in less than five days. It could be a drama, but the characters are too extravagant to take seriously. It could be an adventure film, but there are really no adventures. By way of elimination, it is an action film – but a poor one, with few action scenes. The plot is mostly a pretext to elaborate baroque scenes. To sum it up: it looks like they took an History theme park and improvised a story.

On the other hand, the production is powerful, with good settings and wardrobe, and many characters. Sion Sono’s direction gets the scenography right, specially the choreography of movements of the most scenes with most characters; and also gets the pace right, so even though the film is absurd it does not get boring – with those talents, he should be directing musical films instead. The music of the film is bad though, and the cinematography is correct but fails to profit from the colourful settings.

The acting provides some good performances to appraise in the middle of the absurd story. Sofia Boutella is weak, and Nicolas Cage is just about. But there are good performances from Charles Glover, Nick Cassavetes and Bill Moseley, and an excellent, contained performance from Tak Sakaguchi.

‘Prisoners of the Ghostland’ can be described as having all form, no substance – but form alone is never enough. All in all, 2 out of 5.

Title:	Prisoners of the Ghostland
Genre:	Action
Year:	2021
Nationality:	United States, Japan
Colour:	Colour
Director:	Sion Sono
Writer:	Aaron Hendry, Reza Sixo Safai
Cast:	Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes, Bill Moseley, Tak Sakaguchi, Charles Glover, Cici Zhou, Louis Kurihara, Tetsu Watanabe, Takato Yonemoto, Shin Shimizu, Matthew Chozick, Constant Voisin, Yuzuka Nakaya, Lorena Kotô, Canon Nawata, Maya Carraz, Ilsa Levine, Grace Santos, Christina Virzi, Jai West, Emiri Kisaragi, Nakamo Emerson, Leo, Yuto Endo, Tatsuhiro Yamaoka, Yusuke Motomura, Daisuke Izumi, Hideyuki Kobashi
Producer:	Nate Bolotin, Michael Mendelsohn, Ko Mori, Laura Rister, Reza Sixo Safai
Co-producer:	Shohei Sano
Executive producer:	Natalie Perrotta, Yuji Sadai, Nick Spicer, Aram Tertzakian, Toyoyuki Yokohama
Production designer:	Toshihiro Isomi
Cinematographer:	Sôhei Tanikawa
Film editor:	Taylor Levy
Casting:	Chelsea Ellis Bloch
Costume Designer:	Chieko Matsumoto
Music:	Joseph Trapanese
Running time:	104 minutes
Language:	English, Japanese