The last decade or so of Nicolas Cage‘s career has been marked by bold artistic swings and direct-to-digital action-thrillers that reek of compromise. However, he also starred in a movie that falls into both categories, albeit inadvertently. In 2014, Cage headlined director Paul Schrader‘s Dying of the Light, a spy thriller that presumably had prestige ambitions. But it was wrenched from Schrader’s hands and re-edited without his consent, leading both him and Cage to publicly disown it. The movie is now available to stream domestically on Peacock, where curious audiences have the opportunity to check it out.

Dying of the Light was released before Schrader had a creative reawakening that lasted several years, and before he set fire to the goodwill he’d developed with audiences by declaring his affinity for artificial intelligence. The movie was originally set up as a vehicle for Harrison Ford, with Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn attached to direct. However, Refn left to direct Ryan Gosling in Drive, while Anton Yelchin stepped in to play the part originally offered to Channing Tatum. Cage signed on in the lead role, replacing Ford. However, after filming was completed, Schrader alleged in a Facebook post that the movie was taken away from him, writing, “We lost the battle. ‘Dying of the Light,’ a film I wrote and directed, was taken away from me, reedited, scored and mixed without my input.”

Paul Schrader Has Been on a Creative Roll

The movie debuted to extremely poor reviews, sitting at a 13% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Dying of the Light envelops the spark of several intriguing talents, leaving audiences lost in a yawning void of uninspired filmmaking.” Schrader subsequently re-edited the film using whatever material he had access to and released a rough approximation of his cut on illegal file-sharing websites. He collaborated with Cage again on the movie Dog Eat Dog, which also stars Willem Dafoe. Best known as the writer of Martin Scorsese‘s landmark hits Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, Schrader experienced a resurgence in the last decade with acclaimed films such as First Reformed, The Card Counter, Master Gardener, and most recently, Oh, Canada.

You can now watch Dying of the Light on Peacock, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

Here you can find the original article; the photos and images used in our article also come from this source. We are not their authors; they have been used solely for informational purposes with proper attribution to their original source.[/nospin]

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