Pig (2021)
Directed & Written by Michael Sarnoski

Nicolas Cage must rescue his beloved truffle pig from evil pig-nappers by any means necessary, including teaming up with a sidekick who couldn’t be more different and returning to a life he left behind in Portland. I heard the premise alone and I was completely sold, because, like a lot of people, Nicolas Cage is one of my favorite actors, both when he’s actually acting and when he’s chewing the scenery in a terrible schlocky movie. This sounds hysterical, this sounds like a John Wick spoof ripe for a Cage ham-fest, and I was so ready for that! But it wasn’t. Pig isn’t schlock, it isn’t another gimmick movie that brings you in with a silly premise and then just leaves you dangling (looking at you Willy’s Wonderland), Pig is a shockingly great movie, and up there with his recent Indie genre hits like Mandy and Color Out of Space. I’m telling you this in the intro because if there’s one thing I want you to take away from this review, it’s that you should see this movie.

Usually, with these reviews, I start by talking about the plot but beyond the most basic info about the setup, Nic Cage’s pig named Pig gets pig-napped, I don’t want to talk about anything else in this movie as far as the plot goes. Pig is so unconventional in narrative, so quietly insane, so different than damn near everything I’ve seen lately, that I don’t want to spoil anything about this movie. I didn’t know where this story was going, I didn’t know where the characters were going, and that gives such a sense of mystery and even a little wonder that after all this time there are still so many unique stories left to be told.

What I will say about Pig is that it is cram-packed full of great performances, Cage’s being the most obvious to note but co-star Alex Wolff, of Hereditary fame, shines all on his own, both with Cage and in his own sequences. There’s so much to these performances, a richness to be appreciated, where they, and the rest of the cast, somehow manage to balance big over-the-top emotions and situations with quiet humanity. The over the top elements to everything are some of the most interesting bits, there’s a quiet absurdity to the entire plot, one that could easily be campy or cheesy, but thanks to the skilled and unusual performances, these moments of tragicomedy shine through without taking anything away from the emotional impact of the story. And oh man, is there emotional impact. When Pig was over I sat stunned in that theater and tried to absorb everything I just experienced, staying seated until the last credit was over and the lights popped back on.

I want to keep this review on the short side, not because I have nothing to say, but because I have so much I want to say. Everyone should watch Pig, not just to see a good movie, not just to see the best Nicolas Cage performance in years, not just to experience this emotional rollercoaster, but to see probably the best directorial debut I can think of. That’s right, this is Michael Sarnoski’s first feature and I am so happy that I was able to see this in a movie theater where everyone else there sat in the same stunned silence as I did. I love Pig, I love Nicolas Cage, I love Alex Wolff, I love this weird world they’re in, and I love the confidence it took to make a movie that lives as much, or even more, in its silences than it does in its drama. So yeah, I liked it. Go watch it.