Seeking Justice: movie review

Plot holes in 'Seeking Justice' make the movie simply a less smart version of the usual vigilante justice genre.

Nicolas Cage plays Will, a mild-mannered schoolteacher whose runway model-looking wife (January Jones) is attacked and raped in Roger Donaldson’s “Seeking Justice,” a dumb-dumb variant on the “Death Wish” vigilante justice genre. Highly distraught, Will is approached in the hospital by a shadowy figure, Simon (Guy Pearce), who makes him an offer he could easily refuse, but doesn’t. For a favor to be named later, Simon will have the rapist murdered. By agreeing to this, Will, of course, lets himself in for a heap of trouble. If he didn’t there wouldn’t be a movie.

The idiocy of the film’s conceit is that Simon recruits innocents like Will to carry out these vigilante killings – the killings our liberal legal system won’t sanction. Why would Simon bring these bumbling amateurs into the fray when he and his minions could obviously do a better job? Again, if he didn’t, there wouldn’t be a movie. Grade: C- (Rated R for violence, language and brief sexuality.)