It has a score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Nicolas Cage is such an interesting performer.
His ability to flit between jaw-dropping brilliant, perfect-fit roles, to absolutely HUGE blockbusters, but also complete bottom-shelf, is-this-for-tax-reasons? projects, it is something that very few (if any at all) other performers are capable of.
The last few years have seen him take on some magnificently critically acclaimed movies – Color out of Space, Mandy, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – in between those instantly forgettable direct-to-DVD releases.
Perhaps the movie that has seen Cage receive the most plaudits this side of his most recent Oscar nomination (which was all the way back in 2003) is Pig, in which he plays an isolated truffle forager who must venture back into the big city when his prized truffle-hunting pig is stolen from him.
The shorthand of “Taken, but with a pig” is both spot-on and way off, as it is very much a revenge thriller, but mixed in with an existential crisis, and a career-high performance from Cage himself.
The critics absolutely loved it, resulting in a score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes:
The AV Club – “Like the animal itself, Pig is considerably smarter and more ardent than it appears at first glance, and unearths treasures that are barely evident on the surface level. We’d have settled for much less, but what a rare treat to be offered a great deal more.”
Variety – “As a descent into the apparently high-stakes world of truffle-pig-poaching, Pig is unexpectedly touching; as a showcase for Cage’s brilliance, it’s a revelation.”
Chicago Sun-Times – “It’s a rustic, poetic, occasionally funny, sometimes heartbreaking and wonderfully strange and memorable character study of a man who is in such tremendous pain he had to retreat from the world.”
SlashFilm – “Pig is not the movie you think it is. It’s something far more beautiful, and far more painful. It is an existential meditation on the search for something. Anything. A kind of cosmic loneliness envelopes this film. It’s extraordinary.”
Pig is available to watch with your NOW Cinema Membership from today (Sunday, 16 January).
Clip via Altitude Films
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