Ultimately this is a pretty dissapointing pseudo-remake of the great Abel Ferrara/Harvey Keitel flick. While director Werner Herzog does have some wacky shots and weird bits thrown in here and there it's really not enought to take away from the simple fact that Nicolas Cage has become a pretty terrible cliched actor. It's hard to become engaged in his character when he's obviously just hamming it up the whole time. By contrast Keitel played a character that you feel increasing despair for the whole film. Just looking at the two very different endings gives a pretty clear picture. Keitel ends up spiralling down and sacrificing himself for some Christian notion of charity, Herzog goes with an almost completely happy ending with everyone around Cage getting clean and Cage himself getting a promotion. Now which one of those seems more powerful. A blaze of gunfire or hanging out with fish? I know which one I will rewatch first. Maybe if this isn't compared to its obvious inspiration it wouldn't fail so badly. Herzog still manages to entertain with all the absurd iguana cameos and breakdancing spirits but this one is down near the bottom of all the stuff I've seen from him so far.
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