Do you ever stop and think about how Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman are cousins? It’s pretty wild. It has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but when you’re lying in bed at one in the morning, your mind wanders. Anyhow, Netflix recently had their annual smorgasbord—use that word when you can, the opportunity doesn’t come often—of new films and shows released as palate cleansers between binge-watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine and keeping up to date with Monday Night Raw. Besides some pretty solid finds like Barbarian and The Wild Robot, which would be a pretty epic, albeit thematically conflicting double-feature for the whole family—never too young to teach kids that Richard Brake is always terrifying, regardless of the role—it also has a lesser-seen gem that deserves another look since it’s become readily available to the public: Pig starring Nicolas Cage.
The film follows Rob (Cage), a pessimistic mountain man who lives in a shack with his cute pet truffle pig in the woods of Oregon. He lives a quiet life away from the world, with the exception of the weekly visit from his buyer, Amir (Alex Wolff). One night, Rob’s shack gets attacked, and his pig is abducted. With no other options, he has to team up with Amir, return to the city he’s avoided for the past fifteen years, and try to find his pig.
If Jeff Goldblum is the internet’s boyfriend, Nicolas Cage is the internet’s cool motorcycle-riding uncle that you only see on holidays, but are always excited to hang out with. His presence brings a certain charisma to movies, and regardless of the quality of the film he’s starring in, the aura that surrounds him often leads to his performances being memorable to some extent or another, often because of the out-of-the-box eccentricities that only he can bring to a role. At one point in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, he gesticulates with a pickle. Who else would think to do that? He’s comparable to the Bruckheimer-produced Disney films he’s starred in, which is to say that he is a National Treasure…Book of Secrets.
Mainstream Hollywood seemed to forget that, though, considering Cage stars in roughly three to five small-budgeted movies a year—Scout’s Honor, that is not an exaggeration—and many of them range drastically in quality. Just not in the range you would hope for from one of our greatest living actors. However, Pig seemed to have brought him into a career resurgence, almost like a subtler version of what happened to his Face/Off co-star John Travolta in the 90s, following Pulp Fiction. Considering that in the following years, he would star in widely released hits like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Renfield, Long Legs, Dream Scenario, and most recently with The Surfer. Say what you will about the quality of each movie, but he’s consistently great in all of them. Dream Scenario was kind of lackluster, but you get to see a bald Nicolas Cage wearing a David Byrne suit, and if that’s not a stable reminder that the world is a beautiful place, nothing is.
Some may argue that this career resurgence technically started with his lead performance in Mandy, which isn’t unwarranted. That is the movie where he snaps the neck of a demon with knife genitalia after it was watching lurid videos and doing cocaine. But while Mandy fits into the wild and unhinged archetype that people associate with Nicolas Cage, Pig is like the antithesis of everything people expect from him and the film’s core concept.
When you hear the film’s premise, the movie that most likely comes to mind is the original John Wick, based on how the inciting incident is someone’s home being broken into and violence against a beloved pet setting things in motion. Both protagonists even have pasts that they’re trying to distance themselves from. This comparison isn’t exactly a hot take; if you go online, there are probably multitudes of video essays discussing how the two films contrast with one another. However, it’s still an interesting comparison to make, considering how drastically different they are. One is a balls-to-the-wall revenge film, and the other is a tale about a man who wants to find the only thing that gives his life purpose.
Pig isn’t necessarily a sad movie, but it follows a sad character, and Cage’s performance is so understated compared to his usual on-screen persona that it’s almost like cinematic whiplash. He mentioned in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2021 that he wanted to be taken seriously again as a dramatic performer, stating, “I was interested in a return too—almost like reminding myself, and many of the folks in the critical universe, that [quieter performances] are another one of my paintbrushes.” It shows in his performance, considering how he's very quiet and reserved throughout, with only two brief moments where he shows insane intensity, but by that point in the story, it feels earned.
His performance is what drives the movie—which isn’t to say that it’s all the movie has going for it—and Cage carries himself as a closed-off and broken man who lost all purpose in his life and can’t be bothered with social niceties—that’s also where the few moments of welcomed levity shine through. Possibly the most famous moment in the film, outside of the line from the trailer where he says he’s looking for a truffle pig, is the lunch scene where he more or less breaks down a former employee, played wonderfully by David Knell, and tells him about the futile nature of his life and profession. By the end of the scene, you’ll likely have the same look on your face as Alex Wolff because Cage is off-the-charts good.
The whole film is like an odyssey through the odd and backwards world of the underground Portland restaurant community, which sounds ridiculous, but the movie makes it feel like every establishment in the city operates under the hospitality equivalent of The High Table. The film is somber and emotionally resonant—it also has possibly the most devastatingly beautiful acoustic cover of a Bruce Springsteen song you’ll ever hear in your life—and it’s anchored by the performance of a really great actor. The film didn’t do much business at the box office, but it seems to be having a decent second life on streaming, first on Hulu, and now on Netflix, where it’s currently on their Top 10 Movies list. If you haven’t checked it out yet and can spare 90 minutes—oh yeah, the film is amazingly efficient on runtime—it’s definitely worthy of a Cage-centric movie night.