Pig

I believe in Nic Cage.

You guys watch Brooklyn 99? There’s this great bit about Cage where the show’s happy, yet kinda dumb, lead character is stuck with a snooty classics professor and he tries to get him to watch all the great Nic Cage movies. 

So in order he describes the plots to Face/Off, Con Air, The Rock, and Ghost Rider. All of which are soundly rejected. 

The punchline is that after watching all of those flicks anyway, the professor finds out that along with action silliness Cage also starred in amazing films like Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Leaving Las Vegas. 

I think all I know about Nic Cage’s life is that he bought a dinosaur skull once and he’s related to Francis Ford Coppola. And he had some financial troubles which sent him on a spiral of appearing in just about anything where a check was offered. At least that’s what it looks like from the outside.

But as I go back to the beginning with Cage you can see that maybe he always took jobs regardless of their merits. Maybe he just likes the work? Maybe he took the best he could of what was offered. Maybe he didn’t care. 

Oh, didn’t Sean Penn get mad at him once? Cause of the roles he was taking? 

Anyway, I believe in Nic Cage.

In 1987 Cage breaks out with Moonstruck and Raising Arizona. He’s suddenly kind of a big deal. 

But as you look at the projects for the next decade I’m not sure there’s anything there that sticks. That is as successful. 

Is that Nic? Is that just the way it goes in Hollywood? You will recall that Halle Berry won an Oscar and her next movie, Catwoman, won all the Razzie’s that year.

In the 90’s Nic Cage soldiered on.

How weird and wonderful would that Tim Burton Superman movie have been? I don’t think Nic Cage as Superman would have worked. But Nic Cage as Clark Kent? As an alien pretending to be a human so he can keep his friends and family safe while he battles supervillains? That is a performance I would love to see. 

In ‘95 you get Leaving Las Vegas and then you get three years of pretty great and deeply silly action roles: The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off. 

All of those are ridiculous. But they are all also action classics. I’ll watch any of those things right now on a dare. And there are plenty of movies of every stripe from that era that you couldn’t get me to watch again with a gun to my head. 

Then he works with two of the greatest directors who have ever done the thing: DePalma and Scorsese. Sadly none of these projects are going to be mentioned in the high points of either gentleman’s career. 

Is that Cage’s fault? Is it the directors? Was the material just not there? 

And he follows that up with an action movie about sports car heists in which Cage plays a man called Memphis Raines. 

I’m tempted to make fun of that name but it’s also maybe kind of perfect? If you were going to call yourself a fake name there may not be a better one than that. It even gives the fake name Nic Cage a run for its money. 

I’ll spare you the next two decades but suffice it to say Cage goes on kind of like this. Making a mixture of action cheese and low-budget cheese and then popping up every few years with an all-timer of a movie that reminds everyone that he is an amazing actor who can pretty much do whatever he wants with his time. 

What I’m trying to say is that Nic Cage doesn’t owe you Pig but he made it anyway and it’s amazing. 

Everything he does here is astounding and I was shocked by how good he is in this. I tapped out on Nic Cage a while ago and only came back for Color Out of Space and Mandy. I liked them both but they are showcases for their directors and aren’t the actor-driven drama that Pig is.

Ok so, without getting into specifics this is not the movie that the trailer leads you to believe. It is not a revenge picture about a weird man from the woods who is tracking down his stolen, truffle-hunting, pig. 

Well, I guess it is that, but it is a whole lot more than that. 

There is a part in this movie that requires Nic Cage to basically stare into a man’s soul, give him a speech, and upend his entire life. 

The kind of thing that happens in the real world after years of therapy and in the movies after several scenes of build-up. It happens here in a moment. There is no way it should work. 

I believed every second of it. I believe in Nic Cage. 

I doubt I’ve seen enough movies this year to really handicap these things but from what I’ve seen Pig and King Richard should both get Best Actor nominations. It’s Will Smith’s year and he deserves it.¹ But, let’s all save a little love for Nic Cage. 

And as you watch this or rewatch it ask yourself what other actor could have done this. I went through the list in my head:  

This guy wouldn’t have played him that out of shape. 

The other guy would have balked at playing this much tragedy, with this much weakness and empathy. 

And I can just see this one demanding that the first thing that happens when the main character comes down from the mountain is that he gets a shower, a shave, and a haircut.

Nic Cage wears the rattiness like a coat of armor. You can practically smell him. 

A lot of them would have passed simply because it was a shoestring budget and a 20-day shoot. Have you seen the catering at these things? Pathetic. 

Most of the rest of them simply couldn’t pull it off. You would have never believed them. And since the whole movie hinges on the performance the whole thing would have been lost. 

For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost. 

But Nic Cage did it. Nic Cage can do anything.

Footnotes

1. HA HA I wrote this originally on Letterboxd before the Oscars.

---

How ‘Pig’ Became Nicolas Cage’s Cash Cow

The 15 Best Nicolas Cage Movies