My A$$ Nicholas Cage has a retirement plan. He will star in his own embalming video: "This fluid is colder than my blood and smells bad but I guess that's what ppl do....... anyway it's seeping into my cranium now so gotta run. Think of me come Oscar & Golden (plated) Globe time! It was great staying active so long!! I SHOULD HAVE won something for Raising Arizona, & didn't. Shouldn't have won for leaving Los Vegas, although Elizabeth Shue should have. "The Golden (plated) Globes and Oscars should be talent/performance-based, NOT a popularity contest. In all seriousness this movie was funny for Nic Cage standards. He can be anything from outstanding to horse-dookie depending on the script and direction. For example watch "City of Angels" in which he (and Meg Ryan) made a far reaching sctript into an emotional, into genius work.

I dunno - it's the same type of thing he puts out a half dozen times a year. Watch at own risk.

High concept that goes nowhere. There were a few plusses: Nick Cage as a trained killer is always fun. The little girl was suitably cute. The script featured good grammar and complete sentences.

Otherwise, the by-the-numbers script was unrelentingly pointless, predictable, and dull. The direction was about the level I'd expect from an average episode of "the A-Team", plus the stupid "introduce each character with a freeze-frame and their name in text", which became old and tiresome long before the little-girl hostage was born.

What really pisses me off about this one is that Ron Perlman was giving it his all, I mean, he really rose above the horrible script, until he couldn't anymore, and was let down by a stupid ending that didn't pay off anything it was building to.

In fact, I could say that about the whole movie, except none of the actors really put much into it. Ashley Greene could easily have been replaced by a block of balsa wood, Grace Byers should have been given a mustache to twirl, and Real-Acting-People Jackie Earle Haley and Ernie Hudson could have been played by an A. I. trained by their previous roles. No one else had a discernible personality.

Recommended if you are high, have some junk food handy, and want to waste 103 minutes of your evening without using your brain.

This is where actors go to die. Movies where the story, the plot, the directing, the editing and, yes, the acting are boringly bad.

Remember Rorschach from Watchmen? Remember Ben Sanderson from Leaving Las Vegas or Stanley Goodspeed from The Rock? Remember Salvatore from The Name of the Rose or Hellboy? Same actors, none of the effort. Lazy, predictable, soulless production that doesn't even deserve the required characters length for the imdb review.

I guess people need to eat and all three of these actors have said in the past that they work whatever comes their way, but that doesn't excuse the lack of conviction in their acting in this film. I bet even they hated doing it.

Bottom line: Nothing to see here. Move along.