'Vengeance: A Love Story' Trailer: Nicolas Cage Becomes A Vigilante

Did you see the trailer for Eli Roth and Bruce Willis's remake of Death Wish and think to yourself, "Man, I really hope we get a second movie this year in which a woman being raped is the impetus for a guy taking justice into his own hands," than boy, do I have some great news for you. Here's the first trailer for a new Nicolas Cage thriller called Vengeance: A Love Story, which is based on author Joyce Carol Oates' 2003 novel Rape: A Love Story.

I'm torn about this. I haven't read Oates's book, but the third line in the Amazon synopsis (emphasis mine) – "Teena Maguire should not have tried to shortcut her way home that Fourth of July. Not after midnight, not through Rocky Point Park. Not the way she was dressed in a tank top, denim cutoffs, and high-heeled sandals." – almost makes it seem like the story is a commentary about the oft-used "she was asking for it!" refrain that idiots use about abused women who don't dress conservatively.

I'd like to give this movie the benefit of the doubt, but this trailer makes it out to be a straightforward thriller about a guy who takes the law into his own hands in the wake of a brutal attack. There's no sense that there's anything deeper going on underneath the surface, and no indication that this movie will have anything worthwhile to say. It looks like just another entry in the action genre that perpetuates the conservative fantasy of getting revenge on bad guys when the law fails them. We're on the precipice of a cultural revolution in America right now, and movies like this and Death Wish seem like relics from decades long past. Not every movie has to fit into a pre-ordained box of modern political appropriateness, but people are more in tune with that than ever right now, and I don't imagine this will go over well with half of the country. But maybe that was the plan all along.

Cage himself was once set to direct this film himself, which would have made it infinitely more interesting, but now the movie hails from Johnny Martin, a stuntman-turned-stunt-coordinator-turned-director who's previously made movies with titles like Case#13 and Delirium (I've never heard of them, either).

Here's the poster:

Don Johnson (Django Unchained) and Anna Hutchinson (The Cabin in the Woods) co-star. Vengeance: A Love Story arrives in select theaters and On Demand on September 15, 2017.

On the Fourth of July, single mother Teena is brutally assaulted by a local gang in front of her 12-year-old daughter Bethie. Even though Bethie is able to identify the attackers, the defense hires a local hot-shot defense attorney who manipulates the law to their advantage. When the criminals are set free, Gulf War veteran and detective John Dromoor (Nicolas Cage) is dismayed by the lack of justice and plots revenge against the men on Teena's behalf.