Running with the Devil

This crime procedural is consistently fascinating as it charts the minutiae of the drug business -- but it also tries to be a bit too clever and neglects the characters in the process. Writer-director Jason Cabell is clearly intrigued by the whole process; Running with the Devil may be the first movie to show how cocaine is farmed. Those sequences have an ironically pure, sweet quality as the farmer's wife takes the kids out of school so they can help harvest, and the farmer exhibits clear pride in preparing the product. Yet for all this enthrallment, Cabell also acknowledges the industry's indisputably evil side later in the story.

The movie is likewise fascinated with power -- illustrating how any number of lower-tier drug lords always have a boss above them -- and money, providing text that charts the way cocaine's value rises after every stop it makes. But while Cage does his best playing a two-sided character -- a schlubby, puffy homebody/pizza chef who turns on cool confidence while working the drug trade -- the rest of the characters disappear inside their one-word descriptors. Fishburne, for example, has a blast behaving badly as "The Man" but never fully comes to life, and the same goes for the rest of the otherwise able cast. But Running with the Devil gets points for effort, and it's worth a look.