Nicolas Cage’s Pig
As anyone who has ever spoken to me will know, I am a massive fan of the man & mythical creature that is Nicolas Kim Coppola — otherwise known as Nicolas Cage. Caught at a loose end and in honour of the great man’s 58th Birthday, I decided to rewatch and deep dive one of his best works of recent years, the 2021 film “Pig”.
We open in a forest as a man wanders through, closely followed by an absolutely outstanding Pig. They hunt out truffles together in a wonderful set up involving much clicking and whistling and “Good Girl’s” — setting the scene of an unbreakable bond between man and beast not seen since David Cameron fucked that pig at Oxbridge. Allegedly. Not that Nic fucks his pig — He makes this clear later on and he would never ever do that.
After finding some high-end truffles, he goes back to his cabin and makes a pie/tartlet filled to the brim with fungus, and fries some for his pig companion. We then see why he looks like he’s spent 12 years living in a forest by himself, as his business model for selling the truffles appears to consist of getting paid in tinned food, flour and D batteries. Even I know that isn’t a good business model. The guy who does the deals with him drives a Yellow muscle car with classical music appreciation 101 playing — and Nic takes great delight in ignoring him and slamming the door to his cabin on him without a word, before continuing to chat to his Pig. Anyway, with the batteries in his radio, he starts to play a tape, which appears to be a woman spouting nonsense. He lasts 30 seconds before turning it off.
I did wonder at this point if this might be a literal sequel to ‘Army of One’ where Gary lost his shit at the end and went off into the woods to hunt truffles instead of Bin Laden. I can confirm this isn’t the case, as his voice in this is a rich Baritone of syrupy goodness, as opposed to Joe Pasquale post-castration run through a meat grinder made of sinuses.
Not for fucking long though as in the middle of the night whilst comforting Pig — the door bursts open and someone hits him with a pipe, knocking him down while they wrap Pig in a blanket (not funny — this is serious) and they drive off in a turquoise pickup truck…meaning it’s business time. Nic gets up in the morning and after staring at the door and whistling for his Pig in vain he tries to start his car, which is clunkier than an early 00’s gross-out comedy. It blows up in about 20 seconds and then he walks to a diner for help through a glorious forest.
At this point I have to add to things (not to get too serious or technical at this point) that Nic Cag does an extraordinary amount of acting with the side of his face or the back of his head in this film. Yes he gets front on shots, but there are various shots of just the side of his face or his profile where he conveys emotion or does good acting. Which given his profession is excellent — good job Nic!
In the diner, he has to clear his throat for his first conversation with a person in around a decade we are led to believe as he asks for the proprietor — who has been dead for that amount of time. This means he has to call his business partner Amir the Wanker to come and pick him up and drive him into town. Amir is a pissy little bitch about this but they go to a market where someone knows the turquoise van owners straight away — and they go to them! Turns out they are methheads that look like bastardised clones of McKenzie Crook who admit to nicking the pig and selling him to a ‘City Man’.
TO PORTLAND!
Amir is increasingly whining about the fact that he’s going to be seen with a man who presumably hasn’t washed since the gulf war — but Nic is undeterred and walks through a hipster bar to a tent set up at the back where a man that looks like Derek Jacobi had a homunculus brother looks at him. Nic gives him a plate of non descript food and gets a “you used to be worth something Robin” in return…which must be some kind of code because the next minute Nic is walking in the back entrance of a bar, through to the kitchen and ripping apart a shelving unit to get to an underground tunnel that leads to…A FIGHT CLUB FOR HOSPITALITY WORKERS?! This is absolute John Wick level stuff and I am fully looking forward to this in John Wick 4 where Charon gets the piss beaten out of him by the girls from the bounty office.
Anyway, turns out the guy from the tent is called Edgar — and he runs it! It doesnt seem to be competitive, much moreso that waiters/waitresses get to punch the shit out of a homeless person for up to a minute and they bet on how long it takes them to get knocked out. But all that changes when Nic walks in and writes “ROBIN FELD” on the board and suddenly every dishwasher and usher in the city wants to punch him. Eventually a small bloke gets the chance and beats him up for a minute…and Edgar doesn’t stop it allowing the punishment to continue until Robin is flat on his back. But lo and behold, with a cough and a splutter he gets up and asks for his Pig again, this time getting a note with a location! It’s Sherlock Holmesian in nature — well maybe if you squint a bit.
Anyway Amir takes him home and gives him some French Toast in the morning to…well its breakfast. So for hunger reasons I presume. He tells a story about how his parents went to a restaurant so good that they wouldn’t stop talking about it…Robin’s restaurant. Who is this guy? Well apparently a chef who knows a lot about earthquakes as he goes into a strange speech about an overdue Earthquake that I don’t know has any relevance. I presume Nic read an article this morning and thought people should know. Amir says his Mother committed suicide not long after as Robin is shown with a tear running down his face…what the…
Anyway, Amir gets a reservation for the restaurant on Edgar’s bit of paper after saying it’s for Robin Feld and Robin goes for a jaunt through town, walking up to a child playing the jug on a back porch and tells him that his mother used to live in the house. He spends most of his time talking to the child about Persimmons because there used to be one there, and that scene just ends and we’re in the restaurant. Again, I’m guessing he read a Fact of the Day in the Metro about them.
But now we are cooking…as we sit down in the restaurant and get served a smoking sphere filled with bullshit and an explanation that sounds so pretentious it has a double barrelled name and a carrot up its arse. It’s worth noting that at no stage does Robin clean his face, so he’s sitting in the restaurant looking like an extra from Saving Private Ryan if he got lost on an acid trip in the 60s. So when he asks about truffles he is rebuffed…but then he shows those gorgeous eyes and suddenly the chef of the restaurant recognises him and starts gushing all about the legend of Robin Feld including how he worked for him. Robin reminds him he was an apprentice he fired after two months for overcooking the pasta and it all goes downhill from there, with the chef having a nervous breakdown over the next 3 minutes he explains the concept for his restaurant and Robin systematically breaks down his ‘concept’ and his ideas and dreams. It’s absolutely glorious — it’s like Steven Seagal roundhouse-kicking 16 henchman at once. The chef downs an impressive amount of wine in one gulp, and then tells Robin that his pig is now the property of “someone you don’t want to make angry”…uh ohh….
IT’S AMIR’S DAD!
Amir used the exact quote when describing his father over breakfast and Robin loses his fucking shit, kicking the living fuck out of his yellow Camaro and demanding where his father is as Amir goes back into ‘token girl from 80s action film’ high-pitched squealing. Robin gets the address and steals a bike off a porch on a one man wrecking crew mission for his Pig!! He knocks on the door and someone approaches the door…AS AMIR GOES TO A SECURE UNIT AND TALKS TO HIS MOTHER?!
Back to that later as Robin sits down with Amir’s father — it’s TV’s Adam Arkin! I would list his filmography but I’d be here almost as long as Nic so we’ll leave that alone. Anyway he offers him £15k, then £20k, then £20 million for the pig…which returns me to my business model complaints of earlier as £20 million for any pig is worth it. That’s 4/7ths of an Andy Carroll for fucks sake. Anyway Arkin then introduces himself as some kind of Portland food godfather, and tells him he’ll deliver £25k to him to go back to his cabin or he’ll make bacon out of Pig. Which might be the most horrifying threat ever uttered in film…until Robin comes back and asks if he was always this way or was it just after his wife died?! These two need to simmer the fuck down as Robin leaves the house with Arkin fuming.
Between the black and red of his face, Robin is now resembling a terribly cosplayed Darth Maul who’s just been called away to a parent/teacher conference. Amir turns up and offers to help, and Nic writes a list of things for him to buy as they bond over a mutual hatred of Seattle. Amir asks “what are we doing?” to which Robin replies “getting my pig back”…and some heisty type plan sting plays and I am FULLY ERECT!
Next its a trip to the morgue as Amir goes to ask for something off the list, and we learn that Robin’s wife is buried there. Which is surprising as I genuinely thought he was fucking Arkin’s wife which is why he was being a dick. Lovely twist. Then we see Robin in a bakery, talking to a baker about salted baguettes. It’s a lady baker as well, which adds an extra level of “ooohhh” to proceedings, but believe me this scene goes fucking nowhere other than when she hugs him as he leaves and says “yes chef”. This is simply fucking unnecessary as at this point I want to see a Pig heist.
Amir and Robin go back to a kitchen in Arkin’s house (which seems like an awful security breach for a fancy food Don) and set about cooking in a reddish/brown light — which is a familiar tone throughout the film. Robin starts frying shit and teaching Amir how to cook as some chilled music plays over their silent interaction…PIG HEIST NOW PLEASE AND THANK YOU.
Arkin is coaxed out of his study for dinner and he stares down Amir like a curled out cats turd he’s just dipped a toe in. But never fear, it’s now time for the semi-finals of Masterchef as Robin brings out a plate of food so intricate you could slip it in a glass bottle and sell it as an ornamental wonder, before sitting down to eat with Arkin and Amir — still covered in blood — having dished out a wine pairing. Arkin looks suspicious but sets about the food as Robin does the same, and takes a sip of the wine before beginning to weep and leaving the room.
As heists go it’s a little underwhelming.
He chases down Arkin to his study and Arkin yells at him as it turns out that he’s just cooked an identical meal to the one that Amir referred to earlier as he has a photographic memory for every meal he cooked. Which is a unique superpower that presumably Marvel will release a film about in 2032 in “Phase 9: We’re just doing this for the money”. Arkin breaks down before revealing some devastating news.
The methheads damaged pig so badly they had to put her down….WHY?!?!?! Robin collapses and we see the three men looking distraught as they all consider the loss of Pig — I’M NOT EMOTIONAL RIGHT NOW DON’T FUCKING TEST ME.
Anyway, Amir and Robin head back to the diner and Amir orders two brownies and coffee whilst Robin bores a hole in the table with a thousand mile stare. He profers that “if I never came looking for her, in my head she’d still be alive” — which is hand-down the most emotional thing ever said about a pig since Ham had that Cancer scare in Toy Story 6. They make to leave the diner and Robin says goodbye to Amir and shakes his hand, telling him he’ll walk home despite the fact its dark and the middle of fucking nowhere with a “I’ll see you Thursday?”
This isn’t going to be a happy ending is it?
We see Robin wandering back through the woods towards his cabin — which is a good start. There is a vague chance he might just see out his days listening to the radio and trying to fix his horrorshow of a car. He walks back into his cabin which still has the door wide open, and looks at the tape from earlier — which was the nonsense lady. Anyway he puts it on and she’s singing a song for him and he starts to get undressed and…thats it. Roll credits.
He’s not dead!!
Final Thoughts
- This film is like Taken if Liam Neeson had taken classes in Samuel Beckett instead of gun lessons.
- No one else can make this film other than Cage. He is absolutely mesmorising throughout the film even when spouting bizarre geographical theories. His takedown of the chef in the restaurant is absolutely stunning. I’m willing to bet that the actor who played the chef probably never acted again because he couldn’t move after that scene. He now sits in stasis on a lot somewhere in West Hollywood.
- Portland looks fucking shite, but the Oregon forest looks lovely in our brief time there, it’s lit spectacularly in the opening in particular.
- There is an alternate version of this that goes pure John Wick — and I absolutely want to make it if someone can lend me £30m and a stretch of countryside
- This is top 5 Cage for me. I would go Face/Off, The Rock, Mandy, Drive Angry and this. And I include Drive Angry purely because its a tremendous amount of fun and I like William Fichtner.
- All of these films will be surpassed by the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
