REVIEW: Cage and Kinnaman Stun in ‘Sympathy for the Devil’

Nicolas Cage and Joel Kinnaman are a duo I knew I needed from the moment Sympathy for the Devil was announced, and as the film unravels, the duo exceeds all my expectations. Having celebrated its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival, the film brings together two actors that couldn’t be more different in their demeanors to play men who mirror that. Kinnaman’s characters traditionally are more brooding and silent, whereas Cage’s run the spectrum of quiet but violent to eccentric with a capital E. Together, they work.

Sympathy for the Devil is a strong film because it unravels over the course of its runtime. It doesn’t hint at places it will go to clue the audience in. It just goes there. This allows the film to both discard assumptions the audience may have come into it, either from the title or the actors attached, and instead develop into a tense interpersonal thriller with a twist that comes from left field. That said, you should enter the film with little to no information if you can help it.

Rushing to the hospital to meet his wife, who is giving birth, a man’s life is upended when an eccentric passenger (Nic Cage) enters his back seat. Held up by gunpoint, the Driver is forced to drive a mysterious passenger to wherever he says. Scared of the Passenger, the Driver abides, finding himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse that gets more violent and chaotic as the night goes on. As the stakes rise, memory and identity begin to devolve, and it’s clear that his life isn’t what it seems.

Directed by Yuval Adler and written by Luke Paradise, Sympathy for the Devil builds on itself over its run-time, with Nic Cage getting more and more Nic Cage-y the longer that he is in the car and the more people that the duo runs into. At first, Cage’s escalation as the firetruck red-haired Passenger is an energy that isn’t matched. He is doing too much, sucking the air out of the car, pulling all eyes to him, his gun, and his red velvet jacket. But this is by design.

Despite Kinnaman’s extremely good looks, for this film as the Driver, his hair is disheveled, the glasses hide his face, and his soft-spoken nature creates an everyman character. He’s just a guy, a nobody, someone who is being taken advantage of and wants to get back to his wife. Across each act, however, Kinnaman’s Driver grows to meet Cage’s hostage taker in energy. The duo bounce off of each other electrically until the last moments, and it sells every other element of the film.

As the two of them begin to exchange, Cage’s Passenger begins to grow more unwieldy and more unhinged. With that, it’s nearly impossible to see where the story is going and the unpredictable nature of the two’s interaction makes the film worth watching. While it may be easy to write the film off as just another Cage being Cage film, it’s much more than that. The Passenger pushes the Driver. The Driver pulls back and the Passenger reaches further. It’s a dynamic of the two constantly trying to be farther apart and ending up somewhere uncomfortably close for our mild-mannered Driver.

While some of the more spacious scenes include a diner and a gas station, director Adler’s ability to shoot in the tight space of a car while still using visual elements to build tension is fantastic. Keeping everything simple, in terms of direction, lets the actors erupt from the scene.

The two men are uniquely intertwined with one another, and at moments, you’ll find yourself trying to find the connection, the twist, and getting it wrong until the film’s reveal in the finale. A thrilling car ride of a film, Sympathy for the Devil is a stellar exploration of a person breaking down when morality takes the stage.

Sympathy for the Devil will be playing in theaters nationwide July 28, 2023.