In Pig, a fat, hairy, graying old kook is living happily in the woods when his only friend, a truffle pig, gets kidnapped. So he goes after the pignappers with vengeance on his mind. It’s Taken meets bacon. Except the hermit is played by Nicolas Cage. So it’s ham meets bacon.
Given Cage’s history of, shall we say, indelicate acting, people have started grading him on a curve: Any movie performance in which he doesn’t spend 15 minutes screaming manically gets marked down as “restrained” or “nuanced.” So he’s winning acclaim again for this role. But he lacks subtlety in a different way in Pig. This time he spends the entire movie looking anguished and tortured. He even gets himself beaten up in a fight club for no real reason except it means he gets to play the rest of the movie with giant fake bruises stuck to his face. Put it this way: At no point did I forget that I was watching a Nicolas Cage performance. This supposedly heartfelt little drama feels forced from beginning to end.
Comments