Pig (2021)

(On Cable TV, November 2021) On a conceptual level, there’s something that looks like a heavy parodic intent to Pig’s overarching plot: Here we have Nicholas Cage going on a rampage after his truffle-sniffing pig is stolen, straight into the underworld of the Portland restaurant scene — and all for naught at the end. It sounds like a dark parody of John Wick’s dog-avenging quest, with a final subversion at the end. But there’s nothing funny about Pig on a moment-to-moment basis: Directed with melancholic sadness by Michael Sarnoski, the potentially silly premise becomes a character study of grief wrapped in loose genre clothing. Executed with some precision, it’s undoubtedly a slick film from someone who knows what he’s doing. Whether it works will depend on your tolerance for such a thing: in Cage’s filmography, this is closer to Joe than Mandy, even if Cage does get to go from a finely dramatic performance to a bit of a late-film freakout. The slow, glum pacing frequently runs at odds with the plot’s genre demands — and the intentional disappointment of the conclusion will deflate whatever interest the film will have to audiences not quite expecting Cage to go as dramatic as usual in a deliberately misleading film. At least Pig remains a welcome reminder that Cage can still be an unpredictable and dependable actor — unlike many of his generation struggling for relevance, he’s still going from one wildly different thing to another, and still giving it all he’s got.