DVD Review: The Retirement Plan

The Retirement Plan
(DVD Retirement)

I’ll have to admit, Nicolas Cage stars in a lot of my “guilty pleasure” films — such as The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off, the National Treasure series, the Ghost Rider series and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Usually, I find that a Nicolas Cage film is one where I can turn my brain off and just be entertained by mindless action and/or quirky characters.

 

The Retirement Plan is one of those types of films, but it doesn’t even live up to the promise of the others I already listed. In this film, Cage plays Matt, an ex-intelligence operative and assassin, who is trying to quietly live his post-employment life of leisure in the Cayman Islands, off the radar of past allies and enemies alike. When his estranged daughter gets sucked into her husband’s theft of a flashdrive filled with information critical to a Miami mobster, she sends her daughter to the Caymans (with the flashdrive hidden in her carry-on), hoping the girl’s grandfather (who’s never met her) will protect her.

 

What follows is a madcap adventure, as one of the mobster’s low-level henchmen sends team-after-team of thugs to get the little girl and flashdrive back. No-one (including his own daughter) is aware of Matt’s true history, so no one expects a grey-haired 60-year-old to be a threat, but Matt keeps eliminating bad guy after bad guy.

 

The plot is extremely predictable and the dialog is often cringe-worthy. But some of the performances are terrific, particularly Ron Perlman as Bobo, a philosophical but not particularly reluctant bad guy, and Ernie Hudson as one of Matt’s fellow retirees.

 

But you’ll definitely want to turn your logical brain off and don’t expect any Shakespeare (even though you’ll get some!).

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try pretty much any other Nicolas Cage action film, including the ones linked above.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this film )

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Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

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