A few things worth noting here.
1) This is the trailer for a new movie titled Arsenal. Please, for the love of God, watch it right now.
2) This is the official description of the movie Arsenal, which has been copied and pasted directly from the official Lionsgate YouTube page for the trailer, because we all need to be very clear about what is happening here and we can’t risk any confusion stemming from summarization.
A powerful action thriller, Arsenal tells the intertwining stories of the Lindel brothers, Mikey (Johnathon Schaech) and JP (Adrian Grenier), who had only each other to rely on growing up. As adults, JP found success as the owner of a construction company, while Mikey became a small-time mobster, mired in a life of petty crime.
When Mikey is kidnapped and held for a ransom by ruthless crime boss Eddie King (Nicolas Cage), JP turns to the brothers’ old pal Sal (John Cusack), a plain clothes detective for help. In order to rescue his brother, JP must risk everything and unleash his vengeance against King’s relentless army of gangsters.
Please read that twice. Maybe three times.
3) Okay, now let’s discuss. Arsenal is a movie that stars Vinny Chase from Entourage and Jimmy from That Thing You Do! as brothers, and after Nicolas Cage kidnaps Jimmy from That Thing You Do! and his daughter and holds them for ransom, Vinny Chase from Entourage goes to John Cusack for help and the two of them basically go half-John Wick on a horde of gangsters to save them.
4) John Cusack wears a do-rag in this movie.
5) There is a section of the trailer just after the 1:20 mark where the three consecutive lines of dialogue spoken by Cusack and Grenier are “Look at me! Are you lying to me?,” “Don’t lie to me!,” and “Have you lost your mind?!” They say Hollywood doesn’t make movies like it used to, and then something like this happens, and suddenly the entire industry is redeemed. Please do stick around until the end for the “Let’s settle this” as Adrien Grenier prepares for war while staring out over a lake and industrial park.
6) This is what Nicolas Cage looks like in this movie.
7) This is also what Nicolas Cage looks like in this movie.
8) You probably saw those two pictures — and the thing in the trailer where his character starts smashing things while shouting “You owe me!” — and thought to yourself, “Oh my God, Nicolas Cage made a movie where he plays a mob boss and he wore a wig and fake nose and fake mustache and he looks almost exactly like Tony Clifton. This is it. This is Peak 21st Century Nicolas Cage, even beyond the thing where he, in real life, had to return a stolen dinosaur skull to the Mongolian government.” And yes, that is at least partially true. But there’s also this…
9) Screencrush did some poking around and found out the character Cage is playing in Arsenal is actually kinda, sorta the same one he played in his little-seen 1993 movie Deadfall (directed by his brother, Christopher Coppola), meaning this movie is not only one where Vinny Chase from Entourage and John Cusack go half-John Wick to save Jimmy from That Thing You Do! from the evil clutches of Nicolas Cage dressed like a ’70s lounge singer, it is also a kinda, sorta, unofficial sequel to a movie Nicolas Cage and his brother made over 20 years ago.
10) I must see this movie.
