“Mandy” is the movie that I never asked for, but god was I satisfied when watching it. This movie doesn’t have a whole lot of plot to get in the way of itself, but it doesn’t need one when it’s running on unhinged Nicolas Cage, an insane synth score and high doses of neon.
The plot, what there is of it, follows Nic Cage and his lover Mandy as they live in an “idealistic” post-apocalyptic world. That is until Mandy stumbles upon a Christian cult, The Children of the Sand, led by Jeremiah Sand. Sand becomes infatuated with Mandy and hires three deranged bikers to kidnap her for him. They do, but Mandy refuses Sand, so he brutally kills her in front of Cage by burning her.
The next hour is glorious. It can be summed up like this: Nic Cage screaming in a bathroom in his underwear while pouring liquor on his wounds; Nic Cage forging a battle axe; Nic Cage hunting the three bikers down with his axe and crossbow; Nic Cage violently murdering them while doing a mountain of cocaine off of a broken shard of glass; Nic Cage getting into an epic chainsaw battle with a logger. All I can say is, you cannot go wrong.
The problems with this film are mostly in the beginning and in the type of film. The beginning of this film involves about an hour of incredibly slow and beautiful film work. In fact, it’s not bad, it’s great. But for the average audience, they will find this incredibly boring.
The type of film is the other problem. This is an independent art/horror film, and given the nature of it, many will watch the first 10 minutes and shut it off, thinking it’s a bunch of artsy fartsy nonsense. In reality, this film is one of the best movies I’ve seen in sometime.
Nic Cage and the other actors give A+ performances, director Panos Cosmatos gives a wonderful art direction and the atmosphere of this film is simply unreal.
It should be duly noted, if you only like smashing your face with popcorn while watching “Transformers” or you liked “Batman vs. Superman,” this is probably not the movie for you. If you don’t mind just going along for a ride and enjoying a work of art, then this is for you.
Grade: 9.02/10