In a weird old west Japanese world, the Governor (Bill Moseley) rules a town with his time obsession and his stable of young women. Ghostland is the wasteland beyond. Some of the girls escape. The Governor uses captured criminal Hero (Nicolas Cage) to retrieve his favorite Bernice (Sofia Boutella). He puts Hero in a leather suit rigged to explode. Hero's former partner Psycho (Nick Cassavetes) is a real psycho.
This is Escape from New York and Judge Dredd and whatever craziness coming out of director Sion Sono's brain. Nick Cage is doing more of his weirdness and I applaud him. I want to him all the room he needs. In this case, it's too weird even for me. It gets unwieldy. There's one small example. In the first group tick tock moment, not everybody is moving their heads in the same way. Sono needs to sell that by doing disturbing unison movements. I'm willing to go with the weirdness but it has to be done better. This is style over control. This is walking on a knife's edge. In the end, I can't recommend this except for Cage's completists and Sono fans.
