The Retirement Plan: Big Dumb Escapist Fun with Nic Cage, Comedy and Bloodshed
By Liz Braun
Rating: B
Nicolas Cage continues to dominate the culture, starring in film festival entries (Dream Scenario) and mainstream shoot-‘em-ups simultaneously.
As for the latter, he’s particularly inventive when it comes to killing people in The Retirement Plan, a B-movie extravaganza that also stars Ron Perlman and Jackie Earle Haley. Canadian writer-director Tim Brown captures a heady mix of action, bloodshed and comedy here, hitting all the high notes of a crime thriller even as he appears to be spoofing the genre — and who better to do that with than Cage, the meta master himself?
Nicolas Cage is a beach bum with a special set of skills in The Retirement Plan.
The Retirement Plan kicks off with women and children in danger: Ashley (Ashley Greene) and her 12-year-old daughter Sarah (Thalia Campbell) get pulled into a criminal enterprise and have to go on the run.
What’s at stake here is a hard-drive full of incriminating evidence and a pack of bad guys who’ll kill anyone to get their hands on it.
Ashley is estranged from her father (Cage), but decides to seek his help to protect her family. After more than a decade of not speaking to him, she and her daughter find him at his beach house in the Cayman Islands.
Cage first appears as a rumpled rummy sleeping on the beach, a retired senior apparently keen to go fishing and be left alone. Sarah is bemused to discover that the grandfather she never knew turns out to be some louche old guy with long, straggly grey hair, quick with a quip or a beer but otherwise entirely laid back.
Of course, as the story unfolds, grandpa gradually reveals his true self: ruthless government-trained assassin with mad skills at ending people. He can slice, dice, shoot, strangle or stove your head in — with a barbell, say — and if you’re a bad guy, he will. Cage has no problem kicking butt and keeping up with Liam, Denzel, Keanu and the rest of the gonzo grizzled guys.
But he’ll also keep you amused. Somehow, in the midst of R-rated violence and language, The Retirement Plan makes little things like dumping a body off a boat laugh out loud funny. Cage is hilarious throughout, and he has help, particularly from Perlman in a delightful turn as Bobo, a soft-spoken philosophical killer with an interest in Shakespeare.
The rest of the villains include Haley, cold and snarly as the head thug and Grace Byers as a stone cold killer. By the time Ernie Hudson, Lynn Whitfield, Joel David Moore and Rick Fox turn up in the story, you can really only borrow from SNL’s Stefon: this movie has everything.
(And keep an eye on Canadian child actor Thalia Campbell, who is wildly impressive here, holding her own with all these scene-stealers.)
In sum: The Retirement Plan is big dumb escapist fun and offers plenty of bang for your buck.
Don’t bring the kids.
The Retirement Plan. Written and directed by Tim Brown. Stars Nicolas Cage, Ashley Greene, Ron Perlman and Jackie Earle Haley. Opens in theatres Friday, September 15.