SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Leofwine_draca DYING OF THE LIGHT is a disappointingly cheap and low key thriller from writer/director Paul Schrader, who once wowed audiences with his work on TAXI DRIVER and CAT PEOPLE back in the day. He seems to have fallen a long way since then. The film was shot in Romania and features a slumming-it Nicolas Cage who plays a CIA agent haunted by memories of torture at the hands of an Arab terrorist in years past. When he finds said terrorist is back on the scene, Cage goes gunning for him. Sadly, all of this jumbled film doesn't really add up to much. You get a wasted Anton Yelchin in a role so small as to be negligible and a handful of action bits (mainly taking the form of violent shoot outs) as well as repeated flashbacks to a scene of violent torture. The script fails to rise from the doldrums and seems intent on dishing out cliche after cliche rather than trying anything new. Worst of all, there's none of the suspense or tension expected from this genre; a film made on autopilot, then.

adamcarter-63372 This film is written and directed by one of my favorite filmmakers working today, Paul Schrader. He's most famous for writing Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. However, he also wrote Bringing Out the Dead and directed Dog Eat Dog which I both love and both star Nicolas Cage. The weird thing is that neither Paul Schrader or Nic Cage wants you to see this movie. This is because the Dying of the LIght was taken away from the filmmakers and re-edited by the producers without Paul Scharders approval. He claims that he was literally locked out of the editing room while producers edited the film to their liking. There are points in this film where it truly shows. The version we got is so on and off. There were scenes where I was completely invested in what was unfolding in front of me and other scenes where it was so dull that I just wanted to pass out. The film has great ideas, but it just doesn't do enough with them and when it does something good, the next scene undoes it. At the end of the film, something happens which I found exceptionally impactful and powerful and could have been a great ending, but the next scene completely stabs us in the back and reverses that decision.The editing is unpleasantly sloppy in places which is most apparent during a brief action sequence halfway through the movie. The main character is also fascinating and while Nicolas Cage does a great job, he just isn't explored enough.There is a great film here but it just doesn't make it's way to the surface. What is at the surface is a strange mixture of great and bad. Some scenes in this film or fantastic and some are trash. I hope Paul Schrader's version of the film gets released because I'm positive it is much better than what we got here.

fge-57989 I signed up to make an account and write a review just for this movie because I don't think I've ever seen something quite so boring. If you want a Nicholas Cage movie, go watch Lord of War.The whole premise was interesting, protagonist has a grudge for twenty years and shows symptoms of rapid onset dementia. I'd expect that to affect the story in some way.Maybe the lines between reality and imagination get blurred. Ends up hurting the people he loves. Maybe it's all in his head. There are many directions the movie could have went.Instead it took the plainest route possible. Young CIA desk nerd risks his whole career for no good reason to help main character travel across the world to track down a dying retired terrorist. Meets other uninteresting character and finally tracks him down to have a showdown 1v1 mentally ill old man vs bedridden old man. Along the way he has flashbacks and gets lost a few times. End of story. The premise that was setup at the beginning has no impact at all.I hope this mess wasn't released in theaters... because I'd feel bad for anyone who wasted time watching this, let alone time and money. This movie feels like a direct to TV or direct to DVD movie from 10 or 20 years ago.

MattyAndAnnika Dying of the Light featuring Nicolas Cage, well that's the reason I chose to watch the movie. I'm used to seeing Nicolas Cage typically play himself in every film and I'm typically sure of what to expect; so I didn't feel that watching this movie could be any different. Now Dying of the Light had a great story idea and the acting for the most part was sort of fair, not great. The issue with this film is it seemed to not ever get to what it was aiming for. It's not a bad movie, though it is one of those films that is hard to hold your attention.Dying of the Light did have some really good potential it just didn't come through, great attempt.