Director Roger Donaldson has carved out a notable, if unremarkable, career spanning the past 30-odd years, with memorable successes early on such as Tom Cruise vehicle COCKTAIL and the excellent Cold War thriller NO WAY OUT. More recently he has shown he can also handle action in Al Pacino flick THE RECRUIT and Jason Statham period caper THE BANK JOB. For his latest venture, Donaldson teams up with Nicolas Cage for a New Orleans-based thriller that sees a bereaved husband turn to a vigilante group for vengeance after his wife (January Jones) is brutally raped.

For an actor who is rarely off our screens and seems to actively seek out daring or even ill advised projects, Nicolas Cage seldom plays characters incapable of handling themselves in a crisis. In SEEKING JUSTICE, however, he plays Will Gerard, a bookish school teacher with nothing more threatening to contend with than the occasional insolent student. However, this is still Nicolas Cage we are talking about and so when we are first introduced to Gerard, he is out celebrating Mardi Gras with his beautiful wife, knocking back shots, howling at the moon and cavorting around in a masquerade mask the way only Nic Cage could ever hope to get away with. Throughout the film his character becomes increasingly inconsistent in both his behaviour and actions, which could be attributed to the high stress situations he finds himself in, but might also be down to bad writing or last-minute changes on set. Despite all this, however, the film gives us little alternative but to get behind Gerard as he moves increasingly out of his comfort zone and into harm's way - and much of the credit for this must go to Donaldson and his assured direction.

January Jones, of MAD MEN fame, is not known for her talents or range as an actress, but is actually pretty decent here as both the adoring wife and traumatized victim of a particularly nasty sexual attack. When the action picks up six months after her ordeal, her physical scars have healed but inside she is clearly still hurting and Jones is always believable, both as the helpless beauty and when she begins taking positive steps towards empowering herself in the film's second half.

Guy Pearce does some excellent work too, even if the script seems determined to keep his character one-dimensional and under-developed. On the night of the rape, Simon (Pearce) approaches Gerard in the hospital waiting room, explaining that he represents a group of people prepared to do what the authorities can't in order to make things right. Understandably, Gerard is initially against the idea of murder, but soon his need for retribution wins out and he accepts Simon's offer, agreeing to perform an unspecified favour for them in return at a later date. Of course, when these underground vigilantes come knocking several months down the road, Gerard is reluctant to fulfill his end of the bargain. Simon, however, is not one to take no for an answer. Pearce plays Simon with a delicate balance of charm, stillness and unspoken malice that works fine for the first half of the film. But as Gerard digs deeper, looking to expose or at the very least understand the group, their origins and motives, the script offers us little explanation for Simon's increasingly psychopathic behviour.

The central idea behind SEEKING JUSTICE is an intriguing one. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, disenchanted New Orleans residents have taken it upon themselves to keep the city safe, using citizens they have previously helped as their foot soldiers next time out. However, Donaldson and his writers never appear interested in exploring how these people came together, what drives them forward, or how they benefit from this apparently profitless exercise. The film's second half also becomes weighed down in a subplot concerning a murdered journalist who was investigating the group, which steers the film away from the paranoid man-on-the-run story it had set up, and into far less entertaining territory.

That said, SEEKING JUSTICE uses its Louisiana locations well and stages some effective old school action sequences, one of which is a welcome reminder that there remain few things more nerve-shredding or dangerous than attempting to negotiate high-speed freeway traffic on foot. Cage is his reliable self, running the gamut of his on-screen personas from wild-eyed hellraiser, to beefcake action hero, brooding intellectual and even fawning lovestruck husband. Sadly other members of the supporting cast, such as LOST's Harold Perrineau and the wonderful Jennifer Carpenter from DEXTER are given almost nothing to do other than turn up and get paid. At its best, SEEKING JUSTICE evokes films like the original DEATH WISH and David Fincher's THE GAME, bringing plenty more to the table than was expected. Although ultimately things do devolve into just another bloody fist fight, this still ranks as one of Cage's stronger entries in recent years.