Tempo de Matar

This one is quite peculiar. Not in the sense that it is just another one of those Italian badly-dubbed, vaguely narrated movies with much over- and underacting, pretty landscapes and a musical score by (who else) Ennio Morricone. No, the strange thing is that it has Nicholas Cage in the leading role! I never understand why Italian directors feel so at ease with out of sync dubbing and providing a new voice to actors who don't speak Italian. I think sound, voice and language are very essential ingredients in film (but I am not an Italian). Cage still does a good job with someone else's voice and language and that's a true mark of the man's talent.

Although the story is a bit silly and far-fetched, Cage does a wonderful job portraying an outlaw soldier who thinks he's caught an incurable exotic disease.

This film was nothing spectacular or even above average. It attempts to show one man's world come down on him in a foreign land and turning against his own kind. While it never does accomplish its goal it does explain why Nicolas Cage is one of the best actors of this era. Even in this unknown film which was never released in American theatres, Cage still gives a stunning performance...in fact, perhaps one of the strongest of his acting career. If you truly appreciate Nic Cage as an actor you will truly appreciate his acting in this film.

Found an old VHS version of this film in my parents house so I thought I'd give it a go. Right from the start I wasn't expecting much from this film and I'm glad for that because overall the film was no good.

The acting overall was very poor, even for a Nicolas Cage movie. One scene with a radio controller stands out as being so pitiful that I found it hilarious that this scene wasn't cut. The first 30 minutes of the film had almost no developed plot and I didn't know what was going on.

The story itself had the possibility of being decent but either the director was just bad or was trying too hard to put his own unique touch on the style of the film. I managed to watch the whole thing but I won't likely ever see this film again.

Set in Africa during WWI, this movie offers up a quandary- is the soldier who rapes the girl deserving of his possible punishment. The premise of the story- originally called "the Short cut" is that a soldier inadventently does harm to a native woman. It is only then that he discovers she may have had a disease. Cage is okay as the conflicted, guilty man- but the film never quite attains the degree of conflict it should from the character's crisis. It is a nice study of guilt and cleansing...

I haven't seen all Cage's works by any means but his acting in this one was truly awful. The other characters run the gamut of ability but, having most of the emotional scenes, Cage's scenes are just embarrassing to watch. He's certainly come a long ways in 12 years.