DVD Reviews

Seeking Justice - DVD Review

By Jeff Swindoll Jul 9, 2012, 14:21 GMT

This action-packed thriller stars Nicolas Cage as Will Gerard, a happily married family man whose quiet life is turned upside-down when his wife, Laura (January Jones), is brutally attacked one night while leaving work. At the hospital, waiting for news about his wife\'s condition, Will is approached by Simon, (Guy Pearce) who proposes an intriguing offer: Simon will arrange to have a complete stranger exact vengeance on Laura\'s attacker, in ...more

I’ll leave it to others to come down on Nic Cage.  I think the fella has had it bad enough and maybe safe films like Seeking Justice seem like a sure bet for the actor (certainly it helps pay the tax bill).  There’s not much new to see here and it harkens back to other, maybe better, films. 

New Orleans is a city going to hell (not exactly the best proclamation to get tourism up).  Happily married couple Will (Nicholas Cage) and Laura (January Jones) are celebrating their anniversary, him giving her a fancy necklace. 

Some time later, Laura is attacked on her way home and ends up badly beaten and in the hospital.  Will rushes to her side and feels helpless as he sees his battered wife, now missing that special necklace since it was snatched by her rapist.  The distraught Will is approached by a stranger named Simon (Guy Pearce) who says that he can make sure that Laura’s rapist can be taken care of. 

All that needs to happen is that Will needs to do Simon’s secretive organization a favor sometime in the future.  Of course, things don’t go exactly as Will expects as him owing Simon puts Will’s life in jeopardy. 

It would be easy to come down hard on Nicholas Cage.  In fact, it seems a popular thing to do.  The problem is that Seeking Justice really does nothing to make it memorable.  Cage is playing cage but the film cribs everything from the Star Chamber to Strangers on a Train.  The old “you do me a favor, I do you one” with disastrous or unintended results seems very familiar. 

Of course, Will is a teacher who seemingly develops the ability to get away from the baddies in a Nicholas Cage skilled sort of way.  There is a bit of a turn where Laura takes up arms to get over her trauma that made me think that Jones might pull Nic’s butt out of the fire, but it never really took that turn.  Sadly, it seems Jones isn’t given much to do. 

Pearce never seems like much of a threat.  We always know that Cage will come out on top, must be in his contract.  The production does use New Orleans locations and no doubt added some financial injection into the ailing city.  That might be thing we can congratulate the production on. 

There’s just not much else to bring the action into memorable territory.  Although the film is not terrible made (but it still feels like television like cinematography). 

Seeking Justice is presented in widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions.  Special features include a 7 minute behind-the-scenes and the 2 minute theatrical trailer.

Seeking Justice doesn’t do anything to raise itself into memorable territory.  It never really falls into terrible either.  It just sets there in the middle and would surely give a Cage fan something to do on a rainy Sunday. 

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