The Wicker Man: Nic Cage Gets Burned by Another Weird Role

The Wicker Man is a movie that is good up to a point, but then lets you down, depending on what you are looking for. I watched The Wicker Man, wondering if all the negative vibe had been right. Nic Cage is considered a big star. Why would he be in such a turkey movie?

It seemed to be going well, at first. Neil LaBute is a director who certainly can channel the gender divisions into tense cinematic action, like he did in the Company of Men. Nicolas Cage plays a Arizona cop recovering from a brutal car accident that happened right in front of him.

He gets a letter while on leave from a girl he used to know. She's holed up on some private island in the Pacific Northwest. Since the picture of the little girl looks a lot like the little girl who died in the crash, he goes to the island to make sense of it all. The death of a woman and her child has left him a wreck.

Before long, the cop is demanding questions on this Amish type island where women rule and men are practically second class citizens. The product the island is famous for is the honey, which suddenly had a horrible crop for the first time ever. There are no cars and the cellphone signal is D.O.A.

The cop discovers the missing child is his. The girlfriend, Willow, tells him just enough to keep him intrigued but is barely honest with him. His cop's instincts tell him there is a mystery here, and there is. Is she missing because the harvest was bad? Because she was the special child selected to symbolize the harvest in the festival?

Her picture has been knocked out of its ceremonial frame. For a tiny island with virtually no crime, (the women call each other "sister"), a lot of weird things go on. Ellen Burstyn has a great role as the leader of the women, "Sister Summersisle". Cage clashes swords with her, but he's unarmed.

Why doesn't he smell a rat earlier? Why doesn't he send for backup? Why doesn't he invent some failsafe way to beat the criminals at their own game? A real cop would start investigating in a manner the women were not aware of. I kept waiting for a better movie, this movie to develop. It would make sense that they would cover up any crime a man, an outsider, would be able to uncover.