Prisoners of the Ghostland
Dressed entirely in white other than his red leather gloves, the Governor rules Samurai Town, an oasis of illumination, colour and warmth in the post-apocalyptic nightmare of the wasteland which lies just beyond the gates. Parading through town in his ten-gallon hat his people sing to him, but their adoration is an obligation, each of them prisoners to his will, though most are not so obviously captives as the man brought before him in chains.
A bank robber who with his accomplice slaughtered the staff and bystanders in the shootout before their capture, the Governor has needs of his skills to track and return his beloved granddaughter Bernice who is lost in the Ghostland, “a stretch of highway where evil reigns,” his compliance in the task assured by a booby-trapped leather biker suit into which he is locked which will detonate should he violate the conditions of the deal or fail to return.
Every step along the road haunted by the ghosts of those who died at the Bleufeur Bank, Pig’s Nicolas Cage is the man on a mission, calm and resolute when faced with swordsmen and machine guns but losing patience with Bernice (Hotel Artemis’ Sofia Boutella), mute and uncooperative, both of them guests of the doomsday cult who chain the clock to stop time in an effort to avert a catastrophe already happened, all of them prisoners of the Ghostland.
Directed by Sion Sono, Prisoners of the Ghostland is a blend of the styles and themes of eastern and western cinema, an irradiated wasteland of cultural artefacts and attitudes where hierarchy and history are respected, ritual is observed and any challenge to the status quo is greeted with swordplay and gunplay, the life expectancy of the survivors short and ending in gushing flows of blood.
Samurai Town and the past presented in saturated colours, the Ghostland and beyond are crumbling to dust and burning to ash, broken people clinging to a blood prophecy as they ritually re-enact the events of what has become the creation myth of their industrial wasteland, deranged performance art of disaster and decay defining them, now terrified of change and unwilling to help the strangers in their midst.
The setting contrasting the shanty towns and rag-dressed nomads of Mad Max with the more elaborately designed and lavishly decorated Samurai Town, the premise is intriguing but unfulfilled beyond the first act, Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai’s script falling into a rut from which it never manages to truly escape, Prisoners of the Ghostland never reaching the dizzying madness of Mandy despite Cage doing his wild-eyed best.
Prisoners of the Ghostland will be available on DVD and Blu-ray from Monday 15th November
