The Retirement Plan

Grade: C

Take a look at Nicolas Cage’s credits from the last 8 years or so. In this time, he’s appeared in so many that I’ve never heard of, because they likely had low budgets and releases that didn’t make much noise. He’s often the only recognizable name in the cast – and he’s got 5 upcoming projects. I wonder if he says yes to everything. And now we have The Retirement Plan, which just came out rather quietly. IMDb lists at least 50 critic reviews for a typical movie. Something like Oppenheimer might have more than 100. The Retirement Plan shows five. Mine will be the sixth.

Every character introduction – and it feels like there’s at least 10 of them – gets a comic book style freeze-frame close up while their name appears on the screen, accompanied by the same obnoxious whip sound effect. Ashley Greene (Alice Cullen from the Twilight series) stars as Ashley (Wh-PSCHHHH!). She and her 11-year-old daughter Sarah (Wh-PSCHHHH!) find themselves in trouble with some powerful crime lords. They need to leave town, and the only person Ashley can turn to at this point is her estranged father Matt (Wh-PSCHHHH!), played by a long grey-haired, grey-bearded Nicolas Cage. He is a retired assassin, living as a beach bum in the Cayman Islands.

This is a wacky movie. You could call it an action dark comedy. A few times, I thought about recommending it. One of the things I appreciated about it is nobody is trigger-shy. People get right down to business with almost no hesitation or Talking Killer monologues. Young actress Thalia Campbell is great as Sarah, and forms a bit of a Patty Hearst Syndrome situation with one of her captors – Bobo (Wh-PSCHHHH!), played by Ron Perlman, who has some of the best moments in the movie. Cage does the Nicolas Cage thing, and often forcefully tries to sound older than he is. Some of the action scenes are lazily edited; it sometimes looks like frames are missing from the film. The Retirement Plan is a TV movie quality throwaway. Not exactly Steven Spielberg (Wh-PSCHHHH!).

I can’t remember the last time I disliked an ending this much. It’s an irresponsible level of incomplete, like a car doing 75 on the highway, and spontaneously breaking down. I’ve seen worse movies than this one that had better endings, because I was just happy they were over. But I was at least invested enough into The Retirement Plan that I felt cheated when it extremely abruptly petered out. Why would a filmmaker

Grade: C