The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: The Legacy of Nicolas Cage

Attribution: Kirk Weaver, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Geoff Carter

It seems as if Nicolas Cage has been making movies forever—and for good reason. Having made over one hundred film appearances made over his forty-plus-year career, his presence on streaming channels, cable TV, and movie theaters is ubiquitous. The guy is everywhere. Turn on TCM. There he is in Con-Air. Or Peggy Sue Got Married. Or Moonstruck. Or National Treasure. Or dozens more.

He has starred in offbeat comedies like Raising Arizona and Dream Scenario, appeared in rom-coms like Moonstruck, made straight mainstream action flicks like Face/Off and horror films like Ghost Rider but has also starred in serious and well-acclaimed dramas like Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, and Pig. His range is incredible.

Some say his acting style can be over-the-top, intense, or “unhinged”. His portrayal of Sailor in Wild at Heart is marvelously overwrought and affectingly tender while his rendition of Hi, the henpecked and hopelessly inept ex-con in Raising Arizona, is a brilliant comic performance. While some of his projects are decidedly second-rate movies, Cage usually turns in a competent, if not stellar, performance.

While opinions on his acting range widely, it can’t be denied that Nicholas Cage is not afraid to take chances. Using an acting discipline called Noveau Shamanism (which he developed himself), expressionism, and elements of Kabuki, Cage’s physical, sometimes over-the-top acting style has created a one-of-a-kind screen presence. It is so intense, he has sometimes been accused of overacting.

From the weirdly surreal Dream Scenario to the oddly—but brilliantly—rendered doublings in Adaptation, Cage seems to exist solely to push the artistic envelope, but, on the other hand, he has also appeared in such formulaic thrillers as Ghost Rider, Con Air, and The Rock. Whether it’s standard fare or some strange foreign dish, you can always trust Nicolas Cage to bring his singular big-eyed, high-energy, and edgy persona all the way onto the silver screen. He doesn’t hold back. In fact, he over-the-top acting style has led to his popularity as a social media meme. Such is the price of fame.

Nicholas Cage’s Top Ten Movies

Moonstruck: Loretta Castorini (Cher), a middle-aged widow accepts a wedding proposal from the mousy Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) who asks Loretta to make peace with his brother Ronny (Cage) while he is visiting his mother in Sicily. Loretta agrees and goes to meet Ronny, who is a hot-tempered and bitter baker who blames his brother for losing his hand in a bread-slicing machine. Loretta and Ronny share an animal attraction and make love. Loretta wants to forget the whole thing, but Ronny persuades her to go to the opera with him. He professes his love for her and she says yes. The final scene, when Loretta and Ronny confront Johnny at her parent’s home is a masterpiece of comedy. Cage’s performance is a brilliant blend of operatic rage, poetic heart, and nice-guy sensibility.

Raising Arizona: In this brilliant Coen brothers comedy, Hi McDunnough (Cage) a convicted armed robber, falls in love with Edwina “Ed” (Holly Hunter), the cop who keeps processing him. They settle down and decide to have a baby but soon learn that Ed cannot conceive, but after hearing that furniture magnate Nathan Arizona is the proud father of quintuplets, they decide to kidnap one of the babies. Mayhem ensues when Hi’s past, in the form of escaped cons Gale (John Goodman) and Everell (William Forsythe) come to visit. When bounty hunter Leonard Smalls (Randall “Tex” Cobb) enters the picture, things take a wild turn. Cage is brilliantly clueless as the clumsy and hapless Hi. His endearing awkwardness and ineptitude—especially when played off Hunter’s shrewd practicality—is brilliant.

Leaving Las Vegas: In this harrowing drama, Cage plays Ben Sanderson, a suicidal man who has lost his job and his family. He decides to go to Las Vegas in order to drink himself to death. He meets Sear (Elisabeth Shue) a prostitute and offers to pay her $500 to simply spend an hour with him. The two develop a friendship. Sera invites Cage to move into her apartment. He does on condition she does not criticize his drinking. After a few days, friction develops between them and Sera kicks him out. She is beaten up during a job and is forced to leave her apartment. She hears Ben is dying and goes to him. Cage does not simply portray Sanderson as a drunk. He somehow, doing very little, effects a sadness that envelops the character like a cloud of cologne. It ebbs and flows but never leaves. His resignation and sense of nothingness are almost tangible. A brilliant Oscar-winning performance.

Pig: Rob (Cage), an embittered former renowned Portland chef lives in the woods and forages truffles with his pet pig and sells them to high-end haute cuisine restaurants. One night, he is attacked by assailants and his pig is stolen. He enlists Amir (Alex Wolff) his sales contact to help and returns to Portland to find his pig. Rob looks up Derek (David Knell) who tells him that Amir’s father Darius (Adam Arkin) was behind the theft. Rob confronts him, but Darius refuses to give up the pig. Rob admits to Amir he doesn’t really need the pig to find truffles; he just loves her. In an effort to persuade Darius to give him back the pig, Rob prepares the same meal Darius enjoyed at Rob’s old restaurant, leading to the resolution of the matter. Cage himself has named this is as his favorite and best performance. As with Ben from Leaving Las Vegas, Rob’s sadness and sense of loss reverberate quietly—for Cage—throughout every frame.

Wild at Heart: In this David Lynch classic, Sailor (Cage) newly released from prison after serving a term for manslaughter, is reunited with his lover Lula (Laura Dern), despite heated objections from her mother Marietta Fortune (Diane Ladd). When the two lovers run away, she persuades her private eye boyfriend Johnny Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton) to find them. Sailor and Lula meet Bobby Peru (Willem Defoe) who persuades Sailor to help him rob a store during which he tries to assassinate him. Sailor is arrested and sent back to jail. When he’s released two years later, he finds Lula waiting for him. Cage’s portrayal of Sailor as a passionate infatuated outlaw exuding shades of Elvis Presley is simply great.

Adaptation: In this film, Cage plays Charlie Kaufman (also the screenwriter) and his twin brother Donald, chronicling Kaufman’s own struggles to adapt the novel, The Orchid Thief, to a screenplay. Charlie is depressed, neurotic, and is socially awkward while Donald is affable, socially adept, and friendly. He attends a screenwriting seminar, and—to Charlie’s dismay—sells a screenplay for six figures. Charlie and Donald go to interview the author of the book (Meryl Streep) and accidentally uncovers a plot to manufacture a psychoactive drug from the ghost orchid, leading to a harrowing confrontation in the Florida swamps. Cage’s performance(s) as Charlie and Donald are brilliantly rendered physical performances. The contrast in self-esteem and confidence between the brothers is evident in just their appearance. Charlie’s desperation and Donald’s aggravatingly condescending advice to Charlie is hilarious.

Dream Scenario: In this surreal psychological comedy thriller, Cage plays Paul, a mild-mannered evolutionary biology professor. When he and his wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson) run into Claire, an old friend, she tells Paul he has appeared in her dreams and asks for permission to write about it. Soon, hundreds of people come forward to tell Paul he has been appearing in their dreams, but that he is always passive and disinterested. His students tell him that sometimes terrible things happen in their dreams, but he does nothing to help. People began to complain that Paul is becoming violent and sadistic in their dreams and begin to avoid him. He is vilified and ostracized from society and Janet leaves him. Eventually, it is discovered that the dream space is a shared subconscious that is coopted by an ad firm. Cage’s Ben is a middle-aged frustrated man who is nothing in the real world. The stooped posture, the whiny pleadings, and finally, the reluctance acceptance of all Paul’s humiliating self-revelations are brilliantly captured in Cage’s performance.

Birdy: In one of his earlier films, Cage plays Al, the best friend to Birdy (Matthew Modine) his socially challenged neighbor. Birdy is fascinated with birds and flying and convinces Al to help him build a pigeon aviary. After Birdy falls, his parents dismantle the aviary. Al convinces Birdy to help him restore a car. He also encourages Birdy to go out with Doris (Maud Winchester). They go to prom but Birdy is not really interested. He returns home and lies naked in his bedroom aviary, wishing he were a bird. Al and Birdy are drafted and both wounded in Vietnam. Birdy has withdrawn into himself. Al tries to reach him; his efforts finally end up with the two of them on the hospital roof. As Al, Cage conveys an empathy and concern for his friend that is both paternal and brotherly. He is the foil to Modine’s Birdy and he plays it with just the right amount of restraint.

Con Air: In this action-packed thriller (one of Cage’s many), he plays Cameron Poe, an ex-Army Ranger paroled for killing an assailant who attacked his pregnant wife. Poe is being transported on a prison transport plane to be reunited with his family. The other convicts on the plane are being transported to another prison, but ringleader Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom (John Malkovich) has devised a plane to take over the plane—which he does. Poe establishes contact with U.S. Marshall Vance Larkin and works with him to thwart Grissom and his crew. Con Air hits all the marks of a Hollywood thriller; the supporting cast of archetypal characters including Garland “The Marietta Mangler” Greene (Steve Buscemi), a sort of hybrid Hannibal Lecter Jeffrey Dahmer psychopath, as well as the clueless and inept DEA agent played by Colm Meaney. In many ways, Con Air is like Die Hard set on a prison plane. Cage’s portrayal of Poe, like his rendition of Sailor in Wild at Heart, is sort of a slow-talking deliberate Southern outlaw type—with a heart of gold, of course.

Bringing Out the Dead: In this Martin Scorsese film, Cage plays Frank, a Manhattan paramedic haunted by the ghosts of lost patients and the knowledge he has saved anyone for months. He and his partner Larry (John Goodman) are called to help a Mr. Burke suffering from cardiac arrest. Frank befriends his daughter Mary (Patricia Arquette and discover that they are both acquainted with Noel (), an addict who is frequently hospitalized. A few days later, Frank sees Mary going to Noel’s drug den and attempts to lure her out, but still haunted by demons, he accepts some pills from him that alleviate his pain. Frank and various partners deliver a set of twins, treat an overdose, and other trauma. He and new partner Tom (Tom Sizemore) decide to beat up Noel, but Frank relents and saves him. After her father begs him to let him die, Frank turns off the resuscitator. As in Pig and Leaving Las Vegas, Cage’s Frank seems to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He is a man beaten down by guilt and grief, seeking redemption on the mean streets of Manhattan.