Nic Cage has never been more irritating than in Army of One.
Army of One is now in limited theaters and on Digital HD and comes to Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD, and On Demand November 15.
It’s difficult to know what to think about Gary Faulkner, and Army of One is no help there. Nic Cage’s Faulkner is far too different from the real man.
Both the real and the fictional version use the same phrasing -- “it’s easier for a mouse to get into a castle than it is for a lion” -- to explain why they think their solo mission to infiltrate Pakistan and capture Osama bin Laden is possible. They both seem shockingly earnest, whether the real Faulkner in interviews and late night TV segments or Cage’s highly exaggerated caricature of the man.
The similarities are there, and Army of One has some funny notes. But it relies too heavily on the audience’s suspension of disbelief in one crucial aspect: that anyone could possibly like the version of Gary Faulkner that Nicolas Cage and Borat director Larry Charles have dreamed up.
The real life Gary Faulkner is a handyman from Colorado with kidney problems who received a vision from God commanding him to travel to Pakistan and capture Osama bin Laden. In interviews he seems quiet and a little uncomfortable, though boastful and confident as well. He refers to Pakistani people as “Pakis” not to be disrespectful, he told David Letterman, but because he and the Pakistani people are “like that, we’re cool.”
Cage’s version is a brash, loudmouthed, frenetic, unlikeable mess who only has an outside voice and literally yells about how great America is to everyone he meets (and sometimes to no one at all). Real Faulkner is a convicted felon who’s spent a total of some 12 years in jail, and he’s cited his skills as a thief as his main qualification for the mission. But Army of One leaves that out, attempting to paint Faulkner as a lovable layabout but forgetting to not make him totally insufferable. His crazy bravado goes completely unexplained and as a result feels plain nonsensical.
Plus that voice Cage is doing -- the whiny squeal that taints every word out of his mouth -- is absolutely nothing like how Faulkner actually talks. So it’s both grating and untrue-to-life. You have to wonder where he came up with it, and why. (Cage told Crave that in his own interviews with Faulkner he found him “manic” and “excitable,” neither of which traits is evident in Faulkner’s many public appearances. Go figure.)
Even without those embellishments it’s a weird story, and you can’t really blame the filmmakers for trying to make it even weirder. The fictional Gary Faulkner embarks on lengthy fantasies in which he hang glides over Pakistan’s mountainous deserts and duels “Binny Boy” (his words, not mine) with samurai swords, and Russell Brand as God shows up on barstools and during dialysis treatments to berate Faulker at regular intervals. Because why the heck not?
Those surreal comedy bits aren’t necessarily the problem (besides the nightmare in which Faulkner envisions bin Laden as an “al Qaeda crip” showing off his cave like an episode of MTV Cribs, which although funny is tone deaf and not at all earned). Also the movie’s portrayals of Pakistani people are universally goofy “We love America! Baseball! Woman!” types, which is both lazy and demeaning. Regardless Army of One’s real issues are Cage’s insane performance and the fact that the movie fails to connect its own dots in any satisfying way.
This film -- “a true story, or a story that has truth in it, or maybe elements of truth,” as the infrequent narrator proclaims at the outset -- has plot issues. For example: early on Faulkner, broke, borrows $1,000 from his kidney doctor under false pretenses to buy a boat on which he hopes to sail to Pakistan. He wrecks the boat and replaces it with a hang glider. Along the way are multiple hospital visits and flights to Pakistan as well as Israel. Yet in the movie’s semi-true whimsy there’s no room to explain where the presumably unemployed Faulkner is getting any of the money for all of this.
Is he borrowing it from his girlfriend, Wendi McLendon-Covey’s Marci Mitchell? Because the way she inexplicably falls head over heels for this total buffoon would at least make it plausible that he’d be able to sucker her into funding his crazy quest. The two go from “Oh hey, it’s been years, I jerked off to you in high school” to “I love you” in what feels like a few days, though it’s rarely clear how much time has passed in the movie.
Some of it works, like Brand’s eccentric God, who at one point refers to a penny as “a tiny brown copper sphincter of nothingness” while urging Faulkner to buy his signature sword. But you get the sense that Brand and Cage’s other co-stars, including McLendon-Covey, are kind of phoning it in. And how could they not when faced with that performance from?
A couple of the funniest scenes and some of the few whose laughs don’t come with an equal serving of cringe are between Rainn Wilson and Denis O'Hare, CIA agents with their own quiet quirks. They’re also the only people in the movie who treat Faulkner as the imbecile he seems to be.
Gary Faulkner’s story is a strange one, but in Army of One it plays out so farcically as to seem unbelievable. Did he really crash a hang glider in Israel? (According to him, yes.) Did he convince a US government official to give him a visa to get into Pakistan by sheer force of his patriotism and faith? (Who knows.) Does God really look like Russell Brand? (Hopefully.)
The Verdict
Nic Cage grates and nothing makes sense in Army of One. Director Larry Charles and Cage should have realized that if your movie is based on true events it actually has to make sense, and that reality is often stranger than fiction.
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