Looking Glass 2018 * * 1/2 Stars

Director: Tim Hunter
Year: 2018
Rated R
Rating: * * 1/2 Stars
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Robin Tunney, Marc Blucas

Looking Glass is my latest write-up. It's a murder mystery with style to burn not to mention a surprisingly restrained performance by Nicolas Cage. "Glass" echoes the works of David Lynch, Nimrod Antal, and newbie helmer, Tom Ford. I can't quite recommend it but it does give you reason for avoiding residence at a seedy motel.

"Glass", with its stirring score by Mark Adler, its blase, villainous turn by Marc Blucas, and its Shining-style cinematography by Patrick Cady, revolves around a dude named Ray (Cage). Ray drinks, smokes, looks like a nervous Nellie, and becomes relentlessly curious throughout the entire, 104-minute film.

Ray loses his daughter in a devastating accident. He then takes his drug addict wife (Maggie played by Robin Tunney) and moves to a rundown lodge somewhere in desolate California. There, he becomes the sole owner. Said lodge is plagued by prostitution sex, lesbian encounters, and cold-blooded liquidation (involving pigs and humans no less). Ray observes a lot through a mirror in room ten (hence the title of Looking Glass). The whole pic is set against Grindhouse-style opening credits, Hitchockian residue, and fading, in-and-out characters.

Director Tim Hunter (1986's River's Edge) may be a seasoned veteran but he shoots "Glass" with too much enigma. He toys with his audience while deeming his flick as something where every single persona messes with Cage's Ray for no penetrable reason.

His direction seems admirable and the performances are on par. However, Hunter's premise for the majority of the way, meanders. It never fully adds up until the audience has had enough of the pic's manipulative guessing game. Bottom line: Looking Glass may be striving for introspect and pungent, U Turn navel-gazing. Nevertheless, it "looks" like just another genre exercise in cactus desertion. Rating: 2 and a half stars.

Written by Jesse Burleson