The trailers for Pig teased a John Wick-style action thriller, only with a grizzled Nicolas Cage instead of Keanu Reeves’s sleek assassin and a large pig instead of a sweet beagle puppy.
That’s only half true.
Yes, there is a pig and it’s as loved as much as John Wick loved Daisy.
But this is not John Wick.
Nor is it Mandy, the gloriously phantasmagoric revenge movie where Cage engages in a chainsaw duel after his wife is abducted by a bizarre cult.
Despite the intimidating trailer scene of a bloodied Cage demanding to know who has his pig, Pig is not an action film at all.
Instead, it’s a brilliantly low-key drama more along the lines of First Cow or Leave No Trace, with a stunning lead performance from Cage that’s among his very best.
The actor is known for his ability to go way, way over the top, as he did in Mandy, Face/Off, and Vampire’s Kiss, to name just a few of his most extreme roles.
Earlier this year, he proved he can carry an entire movie without saying a single word in the delightfully silly horror film Willy’s Wonderland.
Here, he digs deeper in much richer material as Rob, a former renowned chef who ekes out a living in the Oregon wilderness with his beloved truffle pig. Together, they find the rare, valuable mushrooms, which he sells to flashy young restaurateur Amir (Alex Wolff).
One night, someone steals his pig and knocks him out. He demands that Amir drive him to Portland to find his pig.
Amir reluctantly agrees, since being seen with a seemingly homeless, possibly insane guy like Rob won’t be good for his image.
Amir, along with the audience, slowly realize Rob is not who he seemed: He’s something of a legend in Portland and his mere presence inspires something akin to fear and awe in those who still remember him.
It’s Cage’s most subtle acting in years. I don’t think he even raises his voice once through the whole film, but he’s riveting in this quiet, stilled mode.
He reminds me of Joaquin Phoenix in Lynne Ramsey’s underrated crime drama You Were Never Really Here: Like Joaquin’s hammer-toting Joe, Rob is a character grappling with his past, his potential for violence, and his tremendous losses.
His quiet stillness can be seen as defeat or strength and maybe Rob himself isn’t sure of the difference anymore. He’s a smoldering, live ember of a man who could set everything on fire, if he wanted to.
The quest becomes existential, like Lee Marvin’s search for his $93,000 — no more, no less — in John Boorman’s neo-noir Point Blank.
Even in this dour landscape, Cage’s ability to render the most ordinary sentence into a funny, meme-able line is still intact. Especially when he calmly tells Amir, who asks if he misses his pig so much because he fucks it, “I don’t fuck my pig.”
Cage kicking ass and shooting up nightclubs while looking for those who wronged him would have made a great movie. While this is not this movie, it’s something better. A great, late-entry Nicolas Cage film that’s worth all the praise it’s getting.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
******
Produced by Vanessa Block, Dimitra Tsingou, Nicolas Cage,
Steve Tisch, David Carrico, Adam Paulsen, Thomas Benski,
Ben Giladi, Dori Rath, Joseph Restanio
Story by Michael Sarnoski and Vanessa Block
Written and Directed by Michael Sarnoski
Starring Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff, Adam Arkin
