Blood, Fire & Dueling Chainsaws: A Logger Revenge Story
Holy shit! Those were the first words out my mouth once the end credits started. Panos Cosmatos has created a masterpiece.
Everyone needs to see this movie. From the opening scene to the very end, the journey is visceral and very much needed.
It’s 1983. Red (played by Nicolas Cage) and Mandy (played by the ethereally-beautiful Andrea Riseborough) live a harmonious life together and don’t bother anyone. He’s a logger and she’s an artist that works at the local mart. When he comes home after work they talk about the galaxy together as they fall asleep in their cabin in the woods by the lake with an amazing view of the night sky.
Cosmatos is preparing us for something awful. You’re nervous watching these scenes because this kind of happiness comes at a price and as any ancient text will tell you, something always enters paradise to fuck it up.
At its soul, Mandy is a love story. Like Clive Owen explained in the film Closer, the heart is a muscle the size of a fist and it’s always pumping and covered in blood. That fist is the heart of Mandy.
Did I mention that Mandy is beautiful? I’m not the only one that noticed. Jeremiah (played by Linus Roache) is the head of a weird (aren’t they all) religious cult and he spots Mandy walking home and decides she has to be a part of his cult.
He concocts a plan to take her and enlists the help of a drugged-out biker gang. Things don’t work out quite how he had planned, but he has undoubtedly taken Red’s heart and people have to pay for shit like that.
The remainder of the film is a logger’s revenge. I can’t ruin this for anyone, but I will say there is a scene involving a Tony Montana size pile of cocaine and a sword fight, but instead of swords, it’s chainsaws.
Some may try to dismiss this film as just a horror film, but I would nominate it for an Academy Award. The work that Cage and Roache put into creating these characters is up there with any Academy-nominated performance. Red versus Jeremiah is the ultimate battle between good and evil and Cosmatos pulls back the curtain to show us that there are no super powers in this world. We’re all just people until curveballs hit us and we turn into something else.
I watched Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas when I was in junior high school. My parents really should have monitored what I checked out from Blockbuster, but what do you do? Before my friends and I had even gotten a chance to experiment with alcohol, I had watched Ben Anderson drink his life away. That performance stuck with me. As I saw people consume alcohol, it never impressed me. In my mind, if you drank, you did it to the point that you went into organ failure and you do it in Las Vegas while a hooker watches over you and begs you to get your act together as she’s hiding the track marks on her arm.
Cage’s performances show you the extremes of human emotion. Do you remember him in Moonstruck? He made me believe that everyone goes on their first date to the Opera. I still believe that to this day and no one can change my mind. With Mandy, he’s solidified in my mind what a person does when their sweetheart is harmed. It’s exactly what I would do too.
I think Jupiter might just be my favorite planet too.
If you’re lucky enough to have the Kevin Smith Q&A with the director and stars of the film after your showing, please stay and watch it. It was a brilliant panel and made the film just that more amazing.
