Just the Ticket #53: The Hungry Rabbit Jumps

Nicholas Cage (National Treasure, reviewed here, and Lord Of War, reviewed here) actually tries to have conversations with other people for once in Seeking Justice, a political crime thriller co-starring Guy Pearce (The Count Of Monte Cristo) and a who's who of TV (Mad Men's January Jones, Lost's Harold Perrineau, Dexter's Jennifer Carpenter, The Good Wife's Mike Pniewski, and Nikita's Xander Berkeley).
Cage is your typical douchebag English professor. He goes for a run in the morning, plays chess with his friend (Perrineau) at his wife's violin recitals, eats pretentious food, drinks anal-retentive coffee, and asks profound questions in his lectures that he gives no one but himself time to answer (a trait reminiscent of Cage's past introverted monologue performances). But when his wife (Jones) is raped and beaten within an inch of her life, Cage's closed-minded professor Will Gerard is approached by the mysterious Simon (Pearce), a messenger promising revenge for hire; revenge that comes with a price tantamount to Will's soul. Soon Will Gerard is drawn into a homicidal pyramid conspiracy that could ruin his life...if it doesn't end his life first.
The smooth, first-person-ish camerawork (with exception to the occasional jerky zoom) enhances the feeling of paranoia you'd expect in a conspiracy thriller; that at any time, the man behind the camera could be doing what Simon says. LOL. Simon is the most congenial villain I've ever seen. Guy Pearce took a role that would have gone to Campy Maniac Land in the hands of Val Kilmer or Christian Slater and used his unerring suaveness to turn Simon into a calm, cool, collected Gentleman Killer straight out of a Dean Koontz novel.
But at the same time, the constant expectation that everyone is in on it kind of ruins the fun of Seeking Justice, because unfortunately, it turns out that everyone is in on it. The clues and plot devices are obviously placed and predictably used, such that we have ample time to wait for the payoff and ample opportunity to ask "what took 'em so long?" I instead opted for a nonchalant hipster's exclamation of "cool" (you know, as opposed to "COOL!!!!!!") because as easy as it was to see everything coming, it was still mildly enjoyable to watch it go.
B

Next issue, Just the Ticket heads back to the 1980s where the guy from The Office and the chick who died first in Scream (reviewed here) try to save a family of whales. Stay tuned for a Big Miracle.