Nicolas Cage is Nicolas Rage.

We’re back to great Nicolas Cage movies. Sympathy for the Devil is one of those films that was on my radar until my general “can’t remember what I had for breakfast” brain power knocked it off of my radar. It’s not that I didn’t want to watch it, I just completely forgot it existed until I saw it on Hulu tonight. So I watched it, and boy was it delicious. Like Mandy but off of vast quantities of PCP-laced LSD.

Sympathy for the Devil was directed by Yuval Adler, who you may know from uh…The Secrets We Keep. I only know about that film because it stars Noomi Rapace and frankly I’m not sure if I’m in love with her as much as I am her jawline. Beautiful. What was my purpose with this? Oh yeah, the film was written by Luke Paradise most known for his one writing role on Sympathy for the Devil starring Nicolas Cage.

The film stars Nicolas Cage as The Passenger. Please hold all Iggy Pop songs until the end of the ride. The Passenger gets into the backseat of the car of Joel Kinnaman, also known as David Chamberlain and tells him to drive. David’s wife is about to give birth and he’s driving to the hospital to be there with her when she goes through labor. David has a bad history with his wife and some past child problems. The Passenger tells David to drive, holding a gun to his head.

Sympathy for the Devil is a great movie, and the title does eventually make sense in the context of the film. Nicolas Cage is dolled up with red hair and is basically told to just be himself. How do I know this is Nicolas Cage at his cagiest? The dude literally showed up on set with the red hair, nobody actually asked him to do it. He also made it so the film would be in Vegas, ensuring twenty more years of Nicolas Cage films once he’s done blowing his wealth at the casinos. Seriously, did Nicolas Cage even come out at a profit after his salary for this movie? Those slots, man.

And Joel Kinnaman is great too, I loved him as Rick Flag in the Suicide Squad films. He plays well off of Cage as the whole time Cage is going insane and losing his marbles Kinnaman is there to deny knowing what’s going on and ask why Cage is being a crazy person. And you know with how movies go, and with Cage’s vague comments about guilt and real identities that there’s no way Kinnaman is just an innocent man going to see his wife. No, there’s more to this story. Much more that will be held out over the next hour and a half. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the side characters, specifically Alexis Zollicoffer who plays the Waitress. She plays her role fantastically.

Sympathy is a bottle movie in that a good portion of it takes place in a car with two guys talking, and they pull it off quite well. You’ll notice a fair few movies here at How About Notflix that I’ve given decent scores to that are basically just two guys shooting the shit for most of the film. Nefarious comes to mind, and I’m not interested enough to check my catalog to see what else fits the bill. Take my word for it. It is nice to think that Cage would just get into the backseat of a random person and terrorize them for no reason. In fact the film might have been funnier if it turned out he did have the wrong guy.

The film also seems designed for audience interaction, because the whole time you’re meant to be thinking with David about how he’s going to escape. Do you crash the car? Speed up to get pulled over? Roll out of the vehicle while it’s moving? How about when you go to a diner for food? What do you do then? If you’re thinking it, the movie probably addresses it. It’s smart, and then Cage screams a lot.

For fans of Cage movies, this is an A rated film. And I’m one of those people.

Rating: A