Nicolas Cage: Oscar Worthy Thespian or Bigger Ham Than Porky Pig?
After Seeing Ghost Rider at the cinema recently I was left with an aversion to Nicolas Cage. Rather than allow this to get the better of me (and miss potentially good films) I decided to immerse myself in Cage’s back catalogue in the hopes this would cure me.
Con Air: Extended Edition
I’ve written about Con Air in the Viewing Journal before and this extended cut doesn’t add much to this excellent OTT action fest. The new scenes are mostly little character moments and as such are pretty superfluous to requirements. Big dumb action doesn’t get much better than this.
Face/Off
Nicolas Cage and John Travolta compete in a scenery chewing contest in probably John Woo’s best film since going Hollywood. It you can get past the ridiculousness of the central idea (two people swapping faces) then there is much fun to be had here. It’s the good guy/bad guy thing that Woo used to do se well in Hong Kong, yet it lacks the emotional depth of The Killer or Hard Boiled (as does all his Western work). It does have plenty of action, with lots of his trademark slow motion diving through the air while firing two guns and plenty of big explosions. As for which of the scenery munchers wins, I’d have to call it a draw.
The Family Man
This attempt at a Contemporary It’s a Wonderful Life never comes close to that films greatness but it’s a passable timewaster if a little overlong. Cage is surprisingly restrained (most of the time) as the successful investment broker who gets the chance to find out what his life might have been like had he married his college sweetheart. As his wife, Téa Leoni is surprisingly good (I’ve never rated her before) but the film is stolen by Makenzie Vega as his young daughter who’s convinced aliens have replaced her real dad. She provides most of the films big laughs and it’s laughs that really let the film down, for a comedy there just aren’t enough of them. Brett Ratner pads the films slender tale out to a two hour plus running time yet when he has a story that could have used that kind of length (X-Men: The Last Stand) he brings it in a good twenty minutes shorter.
Windtalkers: Director’s Cut
The first time I watched Windtalkers I was incredibly disappointed, I expected so much more from the director of Bullet in the Head. Added to that, coming in the wake of the realistic battle scenes of Saving Private Ryan, this seemed like a step backwards. Watching it again I now realise that is exactly what it is - a return to the kind of gung-ho heroics of the post WWII films of the 40’s and 50’s, it’s story about Navajo codetalkers is really just window-dressing. Watched as such and devoid of the expectations a John Woo film used to inspire this is an enjoyable film. I don’t think this extended director’s cut has added any more depth to the film, Woo himself says in his introduction that it’s mainly the battle scenes that have been extended. The cast all give competent if not exactly Oscar worthy performances although I’d love to know whose idea it was to cast Peter Stormare as a GI. Cage as the war weary hero is once again quite restrained, only going too far when he goes a little kill crazy during one of the battle scenes.
Adaptation
Quite possible Cage’s finest role(s) as he plays twin brothers in Spike Jonze follow up to Being John Malkovich. Charlie Kaufman (Cage) is a screenwriter attempting to adapt an un-filmable book for the screen. Donald Kaufman (Cage) is Charlie’s twin brother and is attempting to follow him into the movie industry (don’t call it an industry). Add to this Meryl Streep as the writer of the book and Chris Cooper as the central protagonist in said book, who both appear in flashback (and even flashback within flashback) and you have what should be a recipe for chaos. Thankfully Charlie Kaufman (the real one) manages to turn his real life struggle to adapt a book about orchids into one of the most original scripts to come out of Hollywood in years. It also has the funniest wanking scene since American Beauty.
Lord of War
The problem with Lord of War is that it isn’t anywhere near as clever and insightful as it thinks it is. Basically this films message is guns are bad, the people who sell guns are bad and I think most people probably already knew that. At times it’s very witty - Nic Cage waxing lyrical about the AK47 for example - but all too often it’s actually quite dull. Cage once more avoids the histrionics he’s often prone to and delivers a fairly subdued performance, almost comatose in fact. None of the supporting cast makes an impression, Jared Leto gives us the twitchy junkie we’ve seen him do before while Ethan Hawke seems to have stumbled in from a different film altogether (Training Day 2 perhaps). Still at least the films heart is in the write place.
