Nicolas Cage’s Sympathy For The Devil Looks Even Crazier Than Usual
Nicolas Cage is riding the crazy train in the trailer for Sympathy for the Devil.
If you’re a fan of Nicolas Cage, then you know all too well that it’s hard to keep up with his exceptionally prolific creative output. We’re not denying that the Leaving Las Vegas star has had some monumental flops in the past (The Wicker Man, anyone?), but when he truly gets into a role, he’s an unstoppable force to be reckoned with. Having just watched the trailer for the Sympathy for the Devil that dropped yesterday, we’re going to venture to guess that this film falls into the latter category in Nicolas Cage’s canon.
In the Sympathy for the Devil trailer, we see Joel Kinnaman (The Suicide Squad) get kidnapped by Nicolas Cage, who may or may not be the devil. We have reason to believe that Cage is portraying some iteration of Lucifer himself because of his red suit and goatee. If you’re up on your TV tropes, you know all too well that a goatee often signifies emotional darkness, and is said to be inspired by medieval art that depicts Satan in such a way.
Though the trailer for Sympathy for the Devil doesn’t give us much to work with, we see a sadistic side of Nicolas Cage that one could liken to his performance in 2017’s Mom and Dad. Portraying an unnamed passenger, Cage kidnaps Joel Kinnaman’s character (the driver) while he’s on his way to the hospital where his wife is in labor. When Kinnaman asks to be let go because he has to handle a family emergency, Cage asserts that the only family emergency at the present moment is himself before flashing an evil smirk.
In his usual bombastic delivery, Nicolas Cage wreaks havoc on those who cross his path in Sympathy for the Devil. In just two-and-a-half minutes, we see Cage kill a police officer, throw Molotov cocktails into a diner, and act like a total psychopath as he sits menacingly in the passenger seat of Kinnaman’s car that’s heading toward an unknown destination.
We also see a strange duality in Nicolas Cage’s character in the upcoming film. By now, we are all too familiar with the patented “Nicolas Cage freakout,” but there’s normally a logical series of escalations to follow that gets him to that point before he goes completely over-the-top with his delivery. In the Sympathy for the Devil trailer, we’re seeing the Face/Off star flip back and forth from calm, cool, and calculating to having sudden outbursts of rage when things don’t go his way. One second he’s playfully mocking Kinnaman’s passenger character while waving his gun around, and the next second he’s screaming at the top of his lungs.
While we’re expecting an absolutely menacing performance from Nicolas Cage, the Sympathy for the Devil trailer shows us that the Yuval Adler directed film will lean aggressively into dark humor as well. We’re just hoping that there’s plenty more quotable lines than what we already saw and that RLJE Films isn’t using the best parts for the promotional material.
Sympathy for the Devil is slated for a July 28, 2023 release, and if the movie is half as good as the trailer is making it out to be, then we’re beyond excited to see how this one will play out.
