The Cage Off is back! We continue our journey to discover the best Nic Cage film I watched in 2023. I’m determined to get his complete by the end of the year. And to never do it ever again.
We have four ties to go through today, which will bring us to our final four, so let’s get on with it.
Bringing Out the Dead 1999 vs Dream Scenario 2023
I’m hugely fond of both of those films. Of course I am, that’s why they’re in the quarter finals. Both I’d happily sit down to watch again, though they’re likely to put me in very different moods.
Bringing Out The Dead is a heavy film. Cage plays Frank Pierce, a paramedic who hasn’t saved anyone in months. That responsibility it sitting pretty heavily on his shoulders. Worse, he’s carrying a lot of guilt for one girl he failed to save, and he sees her face everywhere. He begins to question whether his job is to save people or to bear witness to their passing. A chance of redemption comes in the form of Mr Burke, a cardiac arrest patient who they’re about to pronounce dead, but he keeps on hanging in there.
Pierce grows closer to Burke’s daughter, Mary (played by Patricia Arquette), but Pierce starts to doubt whether saving his life is really the best outcome.
The film takes place over three nights. On each, Pierce is partnered with a new driver. John Goodman on the first night, Ving Rhames on the second, and Tom Sizemore on the third. Each have a different approach to the job. Each night is a wild ride where they face life and death and the streets of New York are lit up in all their grim glory.
Cage is an absolute ghoul in this film. He looks thoroughly drained. You believe he’s done when he begs his boss to fire him. He’s haunted and guilt-ridden, but a sense of responsibility to the city keeps him hanging on.
It’s a superb performance. Scorsese doesn’t just know how to present the grim side of New York, he integrates his characters into it. You feel like you’re along for the ride with them, feeling the same old suffering. As I said, it’s not a lot of fun, but damn is it powerful.
Dream Scenario, on the other hand, is a lot of fun. It’s a quirky black comedy. Cage plays the seemingly eternally smiling university professor Paul Matthews. Inexplicably, he starts to appear in everyone’s dreams.
It’s one of those movies that takes a ‘What if…?’ premise and runs with it. As more people start seeing Matthews, his fame grows. However, the more people he speaks to, the more he realises that he’s inactive in people’s dreams, just there, watching as disaster befalls them. This situation offers a chance of fame. Matthews thinks it might finally be the platform he needs to publish his research, but that’s not how others see his fame developing. With this comes frustration, and the man in the dreams switches from passive observer to aggressive actor, giving people nightmares in which he commits varying horrors. The reflection on fame is clear social commentary and it pretty on point, and the dream scenarios offer Cage a chance to play around. This notoriety has a clear effect on Matthews’ life. Cage does a great job portraying this small guy who has been thrown into a huge situation that it now taking over him. The end doesn’t quite hit, with a slight pivot into criticism of commercialism.
2023 was a strong year for Cage, and Dream Scenario may be the best of the lot. I keep coming back to how utterly destroyed the character of Frank Pierce is in Bringing Out the Dead, though. It’s a wonderfully desperate and grim performance, and one that puts Bringing Out the Dead into the Cage-Off semi-finals.
The Rock 1996 Adaptation 2002
Michael Bay’s action films have got a bit of a reputation for being mindless popcorn flicks. And he seems to have been around forever. It’s hard to believe that Bad Boys (1995) was his directorial debut, and The Rock was only his second picture. They both, however, very much come under the umbrella of Jerry Bruckheimer productions, and he’s been in the big-budget, high-action game for a very long time. Top Gun is ten years older than The Rock. Beverly Hills Cop predates that by a couple of years. This combo of an experienced Bruckheimer and Bay while he’s still of enthusiasm works a treat. And maybe the fact that Don Simpson’s drug addiction was utterly out of control also accounts for some of the film’s excesses. The cast is frankly ridiculous. You’ve got Michael Biehn in an almost throwaway role as a Navy Seals commander. (His second role alongside Cage following the 1993 enigma Deadfall). You’ve got John C. McGinley in there among the rogue marines. Even Xander Berkley’s knocking about in the lab at the start of the movie. They you’ve got Tony Todd and Gregory Sporleder goading Hummel into firing the missiles into San Francisco. On the subject of Hummel, he’s brilliant as the conflicted leader of the terrorist operation, alongside his long-service second in command Major Tom Baxter, played by David Morse.
We haven’t even got to Connery and Cage yet. Remember, before The Rock, Cage’s filmography comprises comedies and thrillers, and he’s coming off the back of his Oscar-winning turn in the brilliant Leaving Las Vegas. And Sean Connery’s hardly riding a wave a success at this point – First Knight, anyone? (Mind you, I won’t hear a word against DragonHeart.) I don’t think anyone quite knew what to expect of the two of them together, but it was perfect. It’s the small moments that make it. Mason sighing while Goodspeed rants about something, or longing for the days when inmates couldn’t talk, and then there’s the line “What do you want me to do? Kill him again?” when Goodspeed complains about a twitching corpse.
Adaptation, on the other hand, is Cage supporting Cage. That’s two Nicolas Cages, and in the Cage Off, that’s got to count for something. It’s also a film about writing and creativity, and it’s about as meta as you can get. It started existence when Charlie Kaufman was hired to write the script for an adaptation of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief. He struggled, and ended up writing a script about the struggles to adapt the book instead, creating a twin brother, Donald, along the way. The commentary on writing is fascinating. Donald is used to represent a very different kind of writer, the kind that follows a formula seeking the big bucks, little substance method. But where the film gets really interesting, is when Charlie struggles so much with the adaptation, that he actually enlists Donald’s help, which has a drastic effect on the tone and plot of the film. We end up with a story involving secret lovers, drugs, kidnap as it morphs into a clichéd thriller. It’s an incredibly original film. However, it doesn’t feature a San Fransisco tram coming off the rails and sliding perilously downhill, so The Rock wins.
Pig 2021 vs Renfield 2023
Two recent films find themselves pitched against each other. Both are fantastic, but wholly different films.
When I first started watching Pig, I thought it was going to be something like Taken, but instead of a daughter, we have a kidnapped Pig. It turns out that it’s nothing like that at all. Cage plays this character who lives the life of a recluse, out in the woods, making a living by selling truffles to fancy city restaurant types. Then his pig gets stolen, which takes this strange man into the city. Only it turns out that he’s pretty well known there. The film becomes something much more heartfelt as we come to understand the loss he has suffered in life and why the pig means so much to him. Cage spends much of the film covered in blood and with a single purpose of getting back what he has lost. I came to really feel for the character. I understood what this pig meant to him. It’s far from perfect, with a couple of scenes not quite hitting the mark, and some of it perhaps a little too strange (just why is there a restauranteur Fight Club running under an abandoned hotel), but it gets me every time I watch it. It’s a strangely beautiful film.
Renfield is also a film drenched in blood, but this is more the blood that comes pouring out of torsos shorn of arms. It’s a film that made me laugh so hard. Cage plays Count Dracula, and he’s absolutely perfect for the role. He plays the role as if possessed by the spirit of every actor who has played Dracula before him to deliver pantomime menace. However, the film focuses on his long-suffering servant, and his desire to escape from Dracula’s clutches. This somewhat reduces Cage’s screentime. So while every moment in which he chews scenery is splendid, there’s not enough of him in it, and Pig goes through to the next round.
Face/Off 1997 vs The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent 2022
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent simply wouldn’t exist without Face/Off. How, then, can it possibly come through this round in favour of something upon which its existence is dependent?
This was a really difficult choice. I had to rewatch both films in order to make a decision. Face/Off is an utterly ridiculous action movie, and Nicolas Cage is brilliant in it, particularly in those early moments when he’s Castor Troy. Troy is by far the most interesting character, and when John Travolta takes over the mantle, he becomes the one to watch. The trouble with Sean Archer is that he’s such a vanilla kind of guy. So, when Nicolas Cage is forced to play him, it takes away some of the fun from his performance. I wonder what would have happened had the roles have been reversed?
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent depends heavily on its co-star relationship too, and the combination of Pedro Pascal and Nicolas Cage is incredibly effective. It shares something in common with Adaptation in terms of the meta aspect, and the way it becomes more like an action movie in its latter half. While this element is great, before that, there’s so much fun to be had with Nick and Pedro as they goof about in town throwing around ideas for a film. Some of it is utterly stupid (the wall scene), but ridiculously enjoyable too.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent goes beyond simply borrowing aspects from Cage’s career. It very much does its own ridiculous thing, and that’s why it makes the last four ahead of a film it stole some guns from.
So, we have our final four:
Bringing Out the Dead vs Pig
The Rock vs The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
The Cage Off is brought to you by the Unofficial and Unauthorised Nicolas Cage Puzzle Book: Blockbuster Edition which contains even more puzzles than before, including brand new spot the difference puzzles, Cage connections, exploded cuboids and more.