MANDY...

Nicolas Cage has given up. That's how it seems in Mandy, a sluggish piece of artsy drivel that has him avenging the death of his beloved girlfriend  after she's killed by an evil cult leader. Cage, who has become known for his over the top performances, doesn't even seem to be having fun.

There's a scene at the end where Cage, covered in blood so all we can see are the whites of his eyes, grins insanely into the camera. It's as if he's saying, Look what happened to me. I was supposed to be the great actor of my generation, not Sean Penn or Daniel Day-Lewis. But here I am in this piece of crap...

Gushers of blood spewing from mouths, giant phallic symbols used as weapons, a chainsaw fight, and several scenes of cartoonish violence, all contribute to this mindless dreck.

Viewers know they're in trouble early when Cage has a scene with his beloved Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). They're lying together after, we assume, a bit of the old in and out. "What's your favorite planet?" he asks. She tells him Jupiter, and explains that the storms on the planet's surface could swallow up Earth. "That's wild," Cage says. And they gaze into each other's eyes, as if their love connection is unbreakable. Ugh.

The watered down Death Wish plot has the idyllic couple - they live together in a mansion in the woods (Did they build it? Are they squatters?) - being ambushed and taken away by a religious sect. The Charles Mansonish leader, an androgynous rock star wannabe named Jeremiah (Linus Roache), wants Mandy for his own puzzling needs. He even conjures a trio of demons to help with the abduction.

Of course, the idea of a religious cult being able to whip up demons has potential, and the demons are plenty hideous - one of them has a penis that turns into a big sword - but in this movie the demons aren't especially effective. And neither, apparently, is Jeremiah. When he can't get aroused during some weird sex ritual, Mandy crosses a line by laughing at him. The lesson we learn here is to never mock a cult leader. Jeremiah responds by burning her alive in front of Cage.

Tied up in barbed wire - A Christlike image, I suppose - Cage manages to escape and hunt down the cult members. To carry out the mission, he arms himself with a high powered bow and arrow, and forges a giant battle ax that looks like the grill off an old Chevy.

A gun might have been better, and certainly lighter to carry, but writer/director Panos Cosmatos obviously wanted to set Cage loose like a Norse berserker.

The movie is visually daring  - Cosmatos and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb have created something that looks like an old issue of Heavy Metal come to life, with nods to fantasy artists  like Frank Frazetta and Boris Vellejo - but Cosmatos' is clueless about action and narrative; he slows everything down to a crawl. The film's stupor is not helped by the hammering dirges of King Crimson on the soundtrack. Cosmatos may think he's putting viewers into a sort of drug haze, but the effect is more like a long, uncomfortable nap.

Cage, looking burly and grizzled, isn't allowed to act much here. He does a lot of grunting and sneering, though he does have a remarkable scene where he downs a bottle of vodka and wails in sadness at the loss of his love. It looks silly at first - he's in his underwear - but partway through he seems to  tap into something primal; the grief is, for a moment, painfully real. Unfortunately, we never cared much about Mandy, so we're not feeling anything. She was just some dippy woman in a Black Sabbath T-shirt.

On a side note, Mandy is set in 1983. What was Cage doing that year? He was appearing in Valley Girl as an ersatz punk rocker. That was a charming movie. Remember it? Now we get Mandy, a silly thing.