Film Review: Justice (15)

NEW Orleans schoolteacher Will Gerard (Nicolas Cage) sees his world come crashing down when his musician wife Laura (January Jones) is robbed and sexually assaulted.

The attack leaves her battered and bruised, and at the hospital Will is approached by an enigmatic stranger called Simon (Guy Pearce). He offers to save the couple from a distressing court trial by doling out tough justice to the rapist, if Will agrees to return the favour in the future.

Six months later, Simon contacts Will to collect the debt by asking the teacher to kill a paedophile (Jason Davis). When Will refuses, Simon ups the stakes, jeopardising the teacher’s relationship with his suspicious wife and best friend Jimmy (Harold Perrineau).

Justice is a solid concept competently executed by Donaldson, who makes good use of the New Orleans locations to paint the city as a miasma of bright lights and noise. While we sympathise with Cage’s husband, we don’t share his sense of indignation, and screen chemistry with Jones is a tad chilly.

The more convoluted the narrative becomes, twisting and turning as hunters become the hunted, the quicker our interest wanes until we’re correctly guessing how the skullduggery will end based on Tannen’s unsubtle hints.