Dark -#018

Paul Schrader had Dying of the Light ripped away from him by a greedy studio desperately trying to recoup the $5 million dollars they gave him to make something even moderately coherent. But Paul Schrader would not be denied. Three years after he, his producer, the DP and the principal stars staged a silent protest on the sacred wall of Paul’s Facebook page, he hired an editor and recut the film using his original first cut, DVD’s from dailies, and some scenes gingerly lifted directly from the studios cut to make the film he originally intended audiences to see to the best of his ability. Does the Schrader cut live up to the hype? Does it turn the steaming pile Dying of the Light was into something worth watching? We’ll find out as we mercifully reach the end of our Paul Schrader Nicolas Cage odyssey with Dark.

After being forced into an early retirement by terminal dementia, Evan Lake and his partner set out to settle a score with Evan’s recently resurfaced arch nemesis who was thought to have died 22 years earlier.

Dying of the Light features the late great Anton Yelchin, Swiss actress Irene Jacob, Alexander Karim and of course, the only reason this film is remotely watchable, Academy Award winning actor and the man Paul Schrader always gets the best performances from, Nicolas Kim Coppola better known as Nicolas Cage.