In a formidable and well-staged opening sequence, a six-year-old boy is kidnapped from the peaceful safety of his own front yard, and brutally abused by a wacko pervert in a dark basement surrounded by stuffed monkeys, caged animals and children’s toys. When the child is found murdered and dismembered, the distraught parents have a psychological need to blame someone, but after the cops find numerous remains buried in the killer’s back yard and the jury gives the defendant an easy 25-year plea bargain, the boy’s parents seek a level of justice betrayed by the court by taking the law into their own hands. Embarking on a daring plan to highjack the transport van taking the killer to prison and then give the monster a dose of his own medicine by carrying out their own death penalty, the movie turns from tense to preposterous. The upper middle-class married couple, played by Metcalfe and Christensen, is too beautiful and camera-ready to be believable as grizzled, emotionally destroyed shadows of their former selves. The husband is a doctor, so he knows all about the devastating effects of injectable poisons. All the viewer can do is squirm as they burn their victim with lighted cigarettes, soldering irons and boiling water, slice him open alive with knives, jam hypodermic needles into his organs, and indulge in other horrors too diabolical to describe. The savage and relentless torture eventually overwhelms any sympathy the couple might get from the battered audience, and the continuing horror endured by the chained and blood-soaked captive finally seems pointless. What begins as a valid thriller ends with a contrived ending that is supposed to leave you stupefied (Is it possible they tortured the wrong man?) but will only leave you giggling because you’ll figure out the trick long before the naïve characters do. There is nerve-wracked tension in the inner struggle as their decisions affect their marriage and sense of morality, and the performances are compelling—by the two leads, who deserve better roles, and by the torture victim, although mostly all he is required to do is scream. The audience screams too, although not many will survive The Tortured with their eyes wide open.

rreed@observer.com

THE TORTURED

Running Time 79 minutes

Written by Marek Posival

Directed by Robert Lieberman

Starring Erika Christensen, Jesse Metcalfe and Bill Lippincott

1/4

Jones and Cage.

Nicolas Cage might sleepwalk through much of his career, but if you think he can’t act, take another look at his staggering work in Leaving Las Vegas, or catch up with his cathartic, above-average performance in the new urban crime thriller Seeking Justice. It’s a welcome surprise.

Directed by New Zealand’s king of pain Roger Donaldson, it begins with an SUV pushed off the roof of a New Orleans parking garage in the middle of Mardi Gras. Nobody gets hurt except the driver, thus setting the scene for a formulaic explosion of mayhem and silliness. But brace yourself. What follows is a roller coaster ride, off the beaten track and dashed with detours, and unexpectedly plausible. Mr. Cage is Will Gerard, a hard-working, law-abiding English teacher in a ghetto high school on Rampart Street, whose wife, Laura, is a beautiful cellist in a classical orchestra, played by January Jones on a semester break from Mad Men. One night, leaving rehearsal on the way to her car, Laura is mugged, raped, brutally beaten and left for dead. At the hospital, while waiting for news of her critical condition, the distraught, shell-shocked Will is approached by a dapper but unctuously suspicious mystery man who introduces himself as simply “Simon” (Guy Pearce) and not only claims to know the assailant’s identity, but offers to kill him as a public service, reminding Will that if he pursues justice through normal channels it will take years and even if the rapist is convicted, his sentence will amount to “half the time you get for tax evasion.” The only catch is that Will might be called on at some future date for a “favor.” Despite obvious moral reservations and his resistance to breaking the law himself, Will gives in to his grief and rage, knowing the chances of ever catching his wife’s attacker and bringing him to justice in the nebulous and overburdened court system are next to impossible.

The deed is done. The culprit is eliminated in a gang-style execution and Will thinks the case is closed. Fat chance. His problems are just beginning, and six months later, when the paybacks begin, Will and Laura find themselves sinking deeper into a trap of criminal involvement that reaches nightmare proportions. The action leapfrogs across the city, propelled by secret handshakes, clandestine meetings in raunchy saloons, clues in a certain brand of chocolate bar from a candy dispenser, and cryptic spy-movie passwords like “the hungry rabbit jumps,” and culminates in a gun battle staged in the deserted section of the New Orleans Superdome that has never been restored since Hurricane Katrina. They can’t go to the cops because they’re members of the vigilante group too. The movie relies heavily on the mass panic of Americans whose civil liberties are slowly being diminished by such invasive forces as Homeland Security and the growing impotence of the criminal court system. Strangely, it only occasionally challenges credulity, and the script by Robert Tannen is so rooted in convincing realism that it really keeps you going. The film is aided immeasurably the total realism of the three central performances. Mr. Cage is an average Joe who could be your accountant or your friendly teller at Citibank. Ms. Jones still has the most beautiful hair in show business, and in her portrayal of an innocent wife plunged into a vortex of trauma, there’s not a strand out of place. Bald for no reason but affectation, the versatile and always reliable Guy Pearce is creepy and riveting as an independent hit man who circumvents the time-wasting hours of legal red tape that renders impotent the victims of hoodlums and thugs by taking the errant law into his own hands. Behind the mask of a soft-spoken solid citizen’s concern for fairness and justice, he hides a lethal promise of inescapable evil. The secret organization that recruits ordinary citizens to dispose of the scumbags responsible for the Crescent City going to hell is supported by even the most powerful city fathers until “Simon,” the leader of the gang, spirals out of control and goes viral, disposing of investigative journalists and anyone else who attempts to expose him. Hard to reconcile, I grant you, but I bought it. The acting, writing and production values are coherent and naturalistic enough to make even the most challenging plot twists seem logical.

My one caveat: Mr. Donaldson, a foreign director shooting on location in a New Orleans with which he is clearly unfamiliar, fails to take advantage of the exotic ambience of the most photogenic city in America. You get car chases on generic overpasses and homicides in seedy hotel rooms, and there is one scene in which Mr. Cage mails a letter at the Audubon Park Zoo, but for all you see of the defining atmosphere of a lush and beautiful city that can never be duplicated on a Hollywood sound stage, Seeking Justice could just as easily take place in Bakersfield, Brooklyn, or Altoona, Pa. Still, the movie satisfies, standing stand on its own even without the visual garnish. I’m usually pretty good at figuring these things out, but I didn’t have a clue what was coming next. Seeking Justice is an intense thriller so full of shocks it keeps you wired from start to finish.

rreed@observer.com

SEEKING JUSTICE

Running Time 105 minutes

Written by Todd Hickey (story) and Robert Tannen (screenplay)

Directed by Roger Donaldson

Starring Nicolas Cage, January Jones and Guy Pearce

3/4

It's not like they care about precedent, or anything:

• Sub-headline: "Rajaratnam Receives Longest Prison Term In History For Insider Trading."
• First sentence: "...his involvement in the largest hedge fund insider trading scheme in history."
• End of first paragraph: "It is the longest sentence to be imposed forinsider trading in history."

They just take it one ball game at a time. Also, from the press release:

"Two years ago, Raj Rajaratnam stood at the summit of Wall Street, commanding his own financial empire. Then he was arrested, tried, and convicted by a jury. Mr. Rajaratnam stood convicted 14 times over of felonies, his empire exposed as a web of fraud and corruption that entangled many. Today, Mr.Rajaratnam stood once more and faced justice which was meted out to him. It is a sad conclusion to what once seemed to be a glittering story. We can only hope that this case will be the wake-up call we said it should be when Mr. Rajaratnam was arrested. Privileged professionals do not get a free pass to pursue profit through corrupt means. The message is the same for everyone no matter who you are or how much money you have -- obey the law or face the fate of those who don’t."

Has someone seen The Dark Knight one too many times? Either way, yes, we get it: Raj Raj is going to jail for $64M worth of Insider Trading. Mr. Bharara has yet to get around to that whole Abacus Deal that net John Paulson's hedge fund $1B (and Goldman Sachs $15M in fees with an $840.1M turnaround) after he hand-picked securities designed for him to bet against as failures without the knowledge of investors on the other side of the deal, but surely, that's on the way.*

[*The technical implication of which, of course, is "never happening," because Goldman got slapped on the wrist with a $550M bar tab.]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Via Getty.

Je te l’avais dit.

It’s French for “I told you so." The French do not have a phrase, however, for “jumping the gun”—at least nothing catchy.

As a result, some may find themselves ill-equipped to discuss recent events concerning the potential trial (and recent release) of former I.M.F. chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose public criminal prosecution took a nosedive last week.

Previous displays of aggressive gun-jumping (D.S.K. is guilty!) have now been superseded by other, equally strident displays of aggressive gun-jumping (D.S.K. is innocent!).

French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy crowed in victory for The Daily Beast that “Dominique Strauss-Kahn humiliated in chains ... was not just cruel, it was pornographic.” This followed his having written in May, at the time of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, that “nothing in the world can justify a man being thus thrown to the dogs.” Mr. Lévy also wrote that “nothing, no earthly law, should also allow another woman ... to be exposed to the slime of a public opinion drunk on salacious gossip and driven by who knows what obscure vengeance.” What’s missing in the ellipsis, of course, are the words “[Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s] wife, admirable in her love and courage.”

International monetary doomsayer Nouriel Roubini took to Twitter to express his feelings of validation. “I wrote the day after D.S.K.’s arrest that most likely he was set-up,” he announced. “The latest news now proves that.” He continued: “The lame-media didn’t do its homework.”

(At least one vocal defender was a little more reticent: Ben Stein—he of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Win Ben Stein’s Money fame—mounted a loud defense for Mr. Strauss-Kahn in May that included the line “Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes?” Mr. Stein was roundly criticized for his defense. Since Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s release, Mr. Stein has been silent.)

After the D.A. released Mr. Strauss-Kahn on his own recognizance Friday morning, the New York Post—which only weeks ago described Mr. Strauss-Kahn as everything from a “frog” to a “moneyed French perv”—followed with two claims this weekend: one, that accusations against Mr. Strauss-Kahn came from a prostitute aggrieved that he had refused to pay her, and the other, that the accuser was turning tricks in the custody of the D.A.

This may have been unwarranted gun-jumping too: As of Tuesday morning, the unnamed accuser was suing the New York Post for slander.

The same day, attorneys for Mr. Strauss-Kahn announced that they were initiating a slander suit of their own—this one against Tristane Banon, the striking French writer and friend of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s daughter, who filed a criminal complaint for a 2002 sexual assault perpetrated, she alleges, by Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Ms. Banon’s fate is still unclear and the jury’s out, so to speak, on whether her allegations have any merit. For once, it might be too soon to tell.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Behind a massive DJ booth on stage, the two producers who make up Justice, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, looked every bit the Frenchmen they are clad in leather jackets and puffing away on cigarettes, while tweaking knobs that sent the songs veering from chunky and grungy to tinseled and glossy. (Have two grown men ever had a bigger crush on late-70s Michael Jackson? On the popular track "D.A.N.C.E.", a London’s children choir sings M.J. references over a seriously coked-up bass line and sleazy synthesized hook.)

It’s hard to say how many of the 3,000 neon-wearing concertgoers were chemically altered, but at least one petite, 26-year-old blonde girl was snorting blow from the recessed filter of her Parliament cigarette. Justice’s man-sized, crucifix-shaped light at the center of the stage blinked to the beat, as she jumped up and down.

“Do you like Parliaments?” she said, winking at a young man next to her. He said no.

The concert hit its peak when they performed a remix of "We Are Your Friends." “We! Are! Your Friends!” the 3,000 neon-wearing Francophiles sang on queue. “You’ll! Never! Be! Alone! Again!” The 26-year-old girl, now in the VIP section, chanted really loudly.

Justice plays again tonight at Terminal 5.