Mandy (2018)
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Mandy Movie Review
Mandy is a 2018 action thriller film directed by Panos Cosmatos and starring Nicolas Cage. It’s a polarizing experience that left me intrigued, but mostly annoyed.
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“You are a vicious snowflake“
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The plot is your regular revenge thriller that is only very original in its occult imagery and that part of the story is certainly highly authentic and intriguing. Although crazy and weird, I appreciated the originality present there. But the rest of the story is typical.
Because I did not care about these characters enough, I ended up not caring about Red Miller’s quest for revenge. The movie actually tried to give characters depth through some interesting conversations, but it failed because the two talked so slowly that they annoyed me so much and still remained too much of a mystery. Those scenes are highly pretentious.
Jeremiah is such a crazy villain that he mostly worked, although I still wanted more from him. As for Nicolas Cage, he’s actually very good in the main role and he offered such a good performance in such a crazy role that made him go through hell. But other actors aren’t as good unfortunately.
Mandy’s visual style is very interesting as its heavy metal approach worked well in the context of the story and the use of the color red in particular made this a very cinematic, artistic experience. But again, it’s a case of style over substance as the characters, emotion, themes and plot are all lacking and never as good as the visuals.
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Panos Cosmatos also is not a great director and a better director would have made this a much more enjoyable and more sophisticated experience. The movie has a fine score and the action is solid, but I never really was entertained enough by it and that’s where it failed the most. And the first half is simply too pretentious and the second half is way too bloody and violent.
Mandy has a very interesting visual style to it, memorable occult imagery and a good performance from Nicolas Cage, but the movie is overly pretentious in its first half, overly violent in the second half and rather empty throughout emotionally and thematically speaking. It’s an original film for sure, but too annoying to be enjoyed more.
