Directed by Sion Sono
Written by Aaron Hendry, Reza Sixo Safai
Starring Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes
Runtime: 1 hour 43 minutes
Sundance Premiere, release TBA

by Samuel Antezana, Contributor

Topsy turvy doesn’t begin to describe the latest offering from one of Japan’s most experimental filmmakers, Sion Sono (Tag, Coldfish, Love Exposure) known for his boundary-pushing and subversive work. Aside from Prisoners of the Ghostland being Sono’s first English-speaking (with the inclusion of spoken Japanese) film, and the fact that Nic Cage is in the lead role, most of Sono’s admirers won’t be too surprised with the explosive violence and overall surrealist style that the film packs. In fact, if my experience attending this year’s virtual Sundance Film Festival screening of Prisoners and observing the audience’s mixed reactions via chat room is any indication, then I’m willing to bet that Prisoners might be one of the director’s most divisive films yet. Still, being a longtime fan of Sono myself, and already having my favorites picked out from his filmography, I have to admit, Prisoners wowed me. 

The story follows Nic Cage’s gruff character, only known as “Hero,” who is imprisoned in a small Japanese town by a white suit studded man called The Governor (Bill Moseley), after he and his criminal associate botch a bank heist. The Governor agrees to release Cage if he can recover his granddaughter, Bernice (Sofia Boutella), from a nuclear wasteland on the outside of the town known as the Ghostland. 

I’ve tried to make my summary of the film’s story as clear and simple as possible, but Sono’s English language debut is really anything but simple. The script, written by Reza Sixo Safai and Aaron Henry, explores topics of trauma, grief, conviction and even the atomic bomb’s damaging effect on Japan, among other things. In the hands of more traditional filmmakers, these topics would likely be dissected in a relatively solemn manner. Sono, however, takes them, along with the rest of the script, and dresses them convincingly in what looks to be a warped combination of spaghetti westerns, samurai films, post-apocalyptic action flicks, and acid-laced nightmares. 

It’s all quite strategic, even the casting of Cage in the lead role, a perfect fit for his brand of absurdist acting that more and more people have started to associate with the movies he is attached to. Sono uses all this to reel viewers in, and as we get past the initial weirdness of it all, the impressive long take action sequences (many featuring a personal fav of mine, Tak Sakaguchi of Versus fame), the beautiful cinematography, and the “Rage Cage” freakouts; the film’s teeth start to show.

The film’s Ghostland is inhabited by two factions. One is led by a mutated-looking bus driver leading a convoy of ghouls donning traditional Samurai armor. The other is a tribe of people who are literally and figuratively prisoners to time, their fear stems from a nuclear disaster that has already passed, presumably the fault of a big corporation and the government, both of which fail to take any responsibility for the catastrophe that caused the Ghostland to exist in the first place. 

One of Sono’s most striking images in Prisoners comes directly from the poorly built camp of the tribe that are slaves to time: a group of ragged people pulling at a rope attached to one of the hands of a giant clock tower, they refuse to let time move forward and are therefore stuck in it. To me, the entire logic and message of the film stems from the moments spent with the tribespeople and their ramblings on the fear of moving on with life for fear of disastrous repetition. Regardless of whether or not you are well versed in Japanese history, especially during WWII era, Prisoners can be looked at not only from a Global perspective, but from a personal one, as what we do with our time and how we learn from our own mistakes consistently play a part in our lives. 

To devout followers, Sono’s English language debut may not be the craziest film in his filmography, and for cinema goers less attracted to surrealist story structures and comedicaly violent antics, Prisoners won’t be the film to get them to change their minds about their tastes, or on their opinions of Nic Cage for that matter. Prisoners power comes from its ability to connect with individual film goers on a deeply personal level, in a way that is wholly dependent on how far into a rabbit hole of mad ramblings you are willing to go into, and how much of that madness actually starts to make sense in your head as Sono, the mad hatter, leads you through it.