Was surprised in positive way as well. It's pretty decent all around and definitely a turn around for Nicolas Cage especially if you compare it to the stuff he has been putting out in the past decade or so.

SPOILERS:

The ending could've used a bit more work, though. Seems kind of anticlimactic for the female detective to just show up at Nic Cage's family friendly restaurant and start busting some caps after all the work she has done. Surely she would realize that shooting what was more or less a replaceable middleman would not change anything.

@aholejones said:

SPOILERS:

The ending could've used a bit more work, though. Seems kind of anticlimactic for the female detective to just show up at Nic Cage's family friendly restaurant and start busting some caps after all the work she has done. Surely she would realize that shooting what was more or less a replaceable middleman would not change anything.

Thing is, I never expected it, so there's that. And I have to think an audience would have agreed with the action. As for how dispensable Cage's character was, he seemed to be a lynchpin in the whole smuggling process. As you could see, trust is worth its weight in gold in that enterprise so replacing him would have been difficult with no guarantee that whoever his replacement was wouldn't have failed in any number of ways (getting arrested, ratting out the higher ups, skimming, etc.) His character had a very long track record and that is rare in that business.