Running with the Devil (2019)

Surely, by 2019, Nicolas Cage had sorted out his issues with the IRS?? Otherwise, what on earth possessed him and an equally out-of-sorts Laurence Fishburne to take part in this third rate crime drama. The pair are despatched by their bioss to investigate just what is happening to their disrupted supplies of cocaine. Now it's quite a trail they have to follow stretching from Mexico all the way through the United States to the ultimate destination in Canada. Along the way they discover that not only is their lucrative business being tampered with, but the drugs themselves are being thinned out using dangerous additives that are causing some of their clients to die the grimmest of deaths - not at all good for business! Now, mercifully, there is little dialogue to complain of here - it's all in the imagery and the imagination and there is fails pretty spectacularly. It is flat, dry and although only just over the hour and a half in length, seems to take for ever to reach a predictable and unimaginative denouement. I suppose what is interesting is watching the price rise exponentially as the production chain becomes a distribution one and every pair of hands has to take their cut, but for the most part this is a really disappointing watch that is nobody's finest work - on either side of the camera. Authentic and brutal at times? A little - but it's search for a more family-orientated rating means it's all just a bit lacklustre. I really wouldn't bother.