Last year, I introduced the CHISeLL Score, a very scientific way of ranking Nicolas Cage’s leading ladies based on how hot they are compared to Cage. It’s very important. It wasn’t all-inclusive, as I decided to dismiss some of his smaller films that I haven’t seen. One of those films happened to be Rage, a 2014 revenge film that borrows a lot (re: everything) from the Taken franchise and Mystic River.
Rage is a bad movie, first and foremost; nothing special happens. As I said, the film lives on the hand-me-downs of similar revenge flicks that you’ve seen before. It’s just an excuse for Nicolas Cage to kill a whole bunch of Russian gangsters and emote poorly. The leading female in the film is Rachel Nichols. If you’re not familiar with the name, she’s the attractive redhead from films like G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, P2, and the remake of The Amityville Horror remake starring Ryan Reynolds. She plays Nicolas Cage’s second wife, which basically just gives the filmmakers an excuse to give Cage an age-inappropriate female to make out with. Let’s go deeper by studying her CHISeLL stats.
HOTNESS RATING
Rachel Nichols bares a striking resemblance to a young Bridget Fonda, which is relevant here because Nicolas Cage was in a film called It Could Happen to You, which co-starred a young Bridget Fonda. Fonda scored a 6 on the hotness rating, which is an objective score relative to Cage’s other leading ladies. I’ll say that Rachel’s about the same here.
Hotness Rating: 6
MOVIE QUALITY: RT SCORE
Rage has a scorching 14% on RottenTomatoes. That’s about as low as it gets unless your name is Paul Blart. A 14% gets you a whopping 9 points on the CHISeLL scale, which has only been achieved previously by Trespass, which for all intents and purposes, is the same movie.
Movie Quality – RT Score: 9
MOVIE QUALITY: IMDB SCORE
IMDB is usually a lot kinder to bad Nic Cage movies, and Rage is no different. The IMDB users give this film and incredibly middle-of-the road 5.0, which I think is shockingly generous. That’s about the same as Cage’s first attempt at a Ghost Rider film.
Movie Quality – IMDB Score: 5
AGE DISCREPANCY
Rachel Nichols was 34 when Rage was released, putting her 16 years Nicolas Cage’s junior. For perspective, when Rachel Nichols was graduating high school, Cage was probably on a press tour for City of Angels. Rose Byrne, Cage’s costar in Knowing had a similar age discrepancy of 15.
Age Discrepancy: 16
AVERAGE AGE +/-
Of the women outlined when created the scale, the average age wound up being 31. Rachel Nichols was actually 3 years older than Nic’s average costar, which actually gives her negative points. This part of the scale is to determine relative hotness among his costars.
Average Age +/- Rating: -3
ROLE RATING
The role rating is designed to reward how far the actress had to go for the role. Rachel Nichols doesn’t have to do much with Nic Cage, fortunately for her; she makes out with him a little bit before he starts to sob, so she gets about a 6.
Role Rating: 6
CAGEYNESS
Nicolas Cage isn’t that crazy in this one. He has one freak out moment and has ridiculous hair, so it’s another instance of Rage just sort of being a middle-of-the-road sort of movie. I give it a 6; he’s about on par with how crazy he is in Gone in 60 Seconds.
Cageyness Rating: 6
RAW SCORE
Rachel Nichols grabs herself an impressive 45 raw score, which puts her tied for 5th place with Penelope Cruz and Captain Corelli’s Mandollin. I guess you really don’t have to be particularly impressive in any one category just as long as you’re consistent.
Raw Score: 45
Final CHISeLL Score
Rachel Nichols winds up with a Final CHISeLL Score of 33, which puts her at a very respectable 6th place. The fact that the movie has a pretty garbage RottenTomatoes score helps her cause.
The Main Damie 