The new Nicolas Cage film, ‘Jiu-Jitsu’ released on November 20th in theaters and VOD is a dud and is constructed very poorly. I got drowsy and nearly fell asleep except with the parts with Nicolas Cage fighting the alien Brax and the scene with him and Jake battling it out in Nic’s character Wylie’s underground den where Jake falls into the trap. That was the only exciting part in it that actually turned me on to watch Nic duke it out with Jake using his sword.
The film also stars Frank Grillo and Tony Jaa. It’s directed by Dimitri Logothetis. The film was shot in Cypress, Greece in over 100-degree heat.
The plot focuses on a comet that comes to earth every six years and a team of Jiu-Jitsu fighters with Nicolas Cage and the gang battle against an alien known as ‘Brax’ who is the enemy that comes to earth. Jake, gets hit by the comet which causes him to get amnesia and he doesn’t remember his crew or who he is until it comes back to him later in the film. Unfortunately, the film didn’t fall in line with my expectations.
Amazingly though, Nic is a ‘black belt‘ and all his moves except the stand-in parts are real. If I were to fight Nicky I would probably get clobbered! Yeah, he’s that good! I’ve always been a huge fan of Nic’s he’s an awesome and very handsome actor in almost anything he plays; whether the film is a dud or not! Unfortunately, this film was a dud! I was getting bored and impatient with it and couldn’t wait for it to end! It was a low-budget film and could’ve been made better. The sequence in the film had a ‘comic book’ feel to it which didn’t match up at all with the film itself. Nic is a huge comic book fan and loves Superman!
According to CBR, director Dimitri Logothetis said that he was able to convince Nic Cage to take the role of Wylie and martial arts actor Tony Jaa who he was pursuing for the role for a long time. Logothetis’s goal was to blend martial arts with science fiction. Did it work? Not really.
With the comic book vibe, Logothetis explained to CBR, “Actually, I went with comic books specifically to go to the big screen. I talked to my writing partner Jim McGrath, I said that I’d like to write a comic book and he thought that that was wacky because he felt like we were regressing. “We’re not regressing, I’d like to visualize it because of the storyline. Let’s make it a comic and let’s get somebody to draw it up.” And then once that was done, I was able to see the film. And then from there, I decided to go to a screenplay.”
Watch the trailer on YouTube and judge for yourself.