Rage (2014): This Movie Will Give YOU Rage [Joey’s Review]

by Joey Lewandowski · Published January 18, 2016 · Updated November 19, 2017

Look, I’m not going to bash RAGE… too much. It’s a straight-to-DVD movie, and we all know what that means. We’re not expecting a classic film here. It’s also a movie that was renamed within a month or two of release, which is never a good sign. But still, even within Cage’s straight-to-DVD oeuvre, this movie is not great. As Jordan points out on the podcast (dropping tomorrow!), there’s no reason for this movie to exist. This story has already been told many times before (and been told better many times before), including in recent Cage movies like STOLEN!

What I will give this movie credit for (why am I using so many italics in this post? I have no idea!) is being far more entertaining this time than when I first watched it two years ago. I’m not exactly sure why, but it may have a lot to do with expectations. Back then, I was hopeful it would be a good movie. This time around, I was actively dreading it, remembering how little I liked it the first time I saw it. Funny how things work, huh?

This movie isn’t good, but it has a lot of action, and some of it is actually pretty great. There are at least two or three sequences that are pretty great to watch, which almost makes up for the fact that the characters are underbaked and the story is generic and everything is sort of bland. Much like SEEKING JUSTICE, this movie isn’t catering to a PG-13 rating. (As far as I can tell, this movie isn’t rated. Or maybe I just forget. Either way, it doesn’t matter.) There’s some brutal stuff in here, and it’s kind of great.

But it’s not great enough to make up for the fact that all of the women in this film are, once again, either given nothing to do or treated as objects to move the story forward. I’m looking forward to going back through Cage’s filmography again one day to see if this is a recent trend or if it’s always been there. All I know is that since NATIONAL TREASURE, women have not fared well in Cage’s films. There are a handful of movies left before we “catch up” (for now, anyway), and I’m holding out hope that things will improve.

When it comes down to it, there’s not much of a reason to watch Rage. Sure, if you’re a Cage completist or want to see some cool action, you could do worse than this movie. But even if you’ve resigned yourself to watching something from his straight-to-DVD era, you can do much better with movies like SEEKING JUSTICE or STOLEN.