A Score To Settle is a 2019 action film about an ex-enforcer for a local crime syndicate who has vowed to enact retribution on his mob bosses after years of wrongful imprisonment.
Despite the questionable quality of output in the last few years of Nicolas Cage, it’s somehow always kind of fun to see his face on the poster of a new film in release, mostly because of the possibilities. He can make even the most dull of productions pulse with some life just by being in the cast, which is where we’re at with director Shawn Ku‘s new film, A Score To Settle, with Cage offering up a fairly nuanced take on a has-been character, though the movie itself is far more static, unable to give it the breadth it feels wanting to deliver.
Frank (Cage) is recently released from a maximum security prison where he’s spent a hard twenty years. It’s not that he’s served his full time but that he’s afflicted with such an awful case of insomnia, it’s ruined his health, leaving his brain a little loose. Once free, he is met by his nineteen-year-old son Joey (Noah Le Gros), hoping to reconnecting while haunted by past involvement with a crime boss named Max (Dave Kenneth MacKinnon), with whom he took the hit for in going to jail. After digging up a buried fortune he left hidden from all, he goes on a quest to become a good father while plotting his revenge against those that betrayed him, meeting Simone (Karolina Wydra), a passionate prostitute who tries to help his slow mental decline.
There’s a lot fighting for space in Ku’s low budget effort as Frank deals with his timid, formerly drug-addicted son, his lust of seeing justice done to those who let him rot, his fading brain, and the love of a woman. It all mostly takes place inside a luxury hotel where Frank rents a high-priced room, lodging Joey with him. These are the best moments in a small production, giving Cage some room to spread his dramatic wings per se as Frank begins to splinter. It might have been enough to sustain the whole film, the relationship between the two loaded with plenty of possible punch.
However, that’s not what this is about as Frank is more interested in hunting down men from his past, getting his hands on some firepower and checking off his doomsday list with Q (Benjamin Bratt), who he hopes has answers to questions, before tracking down others who all seem to know that their pasts have long been waiting to catch up. That puts violence at the forefront, or at least the expectation of such, the genre more than serving as template for such, though Ku doesn’t quite go there, instead leaning more heavily on Frank’s use of Simone to find some balance. It sounds like a good plan but it’s not entirely convincing, which is in fact where the film eventually finds itself spinning its wheels.
There are good intentions soaked into every corner of A Score To Settle, but it has absolutely no authenticity to it, no deep-seeded angst or pain at its core for which it can exploit, instead keeping it all at a low bake. Cage is the best thing going about even as he doesn’t fully commit, the screenplay too crowded to really let him take it where he most certainly could. The rest of the cast aren’t nearly as focused and though Wydra has some presence, there little here that resonants. Worth it for Cage fans but most will be disappointed by the unfulfilled promise of its title.