The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

I would be late to the party if I were to suggest that Nicolas Cage has been on a role these past few years. This is not to suggest that the Nic Cage famous for apparently taking any role (not true, he has said) is gone; in the past five years, he has appeared in twenty-four films, most of which were not critically well-received. But some of the highlights of this "renaissance" part of his career have seen him play an eclectic group of characters, from his voice work in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, to the gonzo violence of the arthouse horror flick Mandy, to his odyssey-like quest to find his kidnapped pig in Pig. 

Surely his newest film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a film he (in further proof that he doesn't take every role) turned down numerous times, would be included here. Why wouldn't it? For one, it's a unique role and acting challenge, for he's not playing an alienated man on a quest or another version of Spider-Man. Here, he plays...Nicolas Cage, a highly exaggerated version of his highly exaggerated acting style. Beyond that, it's a performance and film that have been eaten up by critics and regular viewers alike; despite underperforming at the box office, its Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer and Audience Score are at eighty-six percent and eighty-seven percent, respectively. I really wish I could consider myself one of the many fans of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, but alas, I am not. 

The film, directed and co-written by Tom Gormican, is undoubtedly a love letter to Nicolas Cage, a man whose Hollywood career is among the most unique, most eccentric, most roller coaster-like, so much so that it's difficult to write about in a succinct way. At any rate, Cage looks like he's having a blast. How could he not? One gets the impression most Hollywood actors do in fact like satirizing themselves. Cage hilariously did so ten years ago on Saturday Night Live appearing alongside Andy Samberg, who also played an irate "exaggerated screaming psychopath" version of Cage as the real Cage sat next to him and tried to calm him down by complimenting him. 

Cage sort of gets a second change at poking fun of himself here. The Nicolas Cage as a character in this film is a man who can't act particularly well, and he takes "his craft" so seriously that his opining about his methods makes him snobbish and a bore. For some reason not explained, he also talks to himself—I mean, a much younger version of himself named Nicky. Nicky looks kind of like Cage did in his Red Rock West era of the early 1990s. In fact, the filmmakers based this alternate personality of Cage on his bizarre appearance in an interview in 1990 with Terry Wogan, the one in which he tossed money to the audience and took off his shirt. 

In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Cage is in a rut. He can't get the roles he wants, and Nicky is pressuring him to remember that he's a movie star, not an actor. He does not have much of a relationship with his daughter (Lily Sheen), mainly because he does all the talking when they're together, like when he lectures her about what a great film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is. Desperate for a decent role and drowning in debt, he decides to throw in the towel and retire, until his agent (Neil Patrick Harris) convinces him to accept an offer from a Spanish playboy millionaire named Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) to be the guest of honor at Javi's birthday party in Majorca. 

Hesitant at first, Cage eventually accepts and travels to meet Javi. Initially unnerved at some of Javi's eccentricities, the two eventually become closer and closer, especially as they share their love of film (Javi, too, loves The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and he introduces him to the beauty that is Paddington 2) and passion to revamp Javi's screenplay (something about, according to Cage, "dueling Christ figures"), but eventually their new friendship is to be tested. Cage is contacted by two CIA agents (played by Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz), who inform him that Javi kidnapped a woman named Maria (Katrin Vankova), the daughter of a politician leading in the upcoming Catalonian election. (The subplot about the election is a bit convoluted, but few audience members will care.) Cage finds it difficult to believe that it is Javi behind this plot, and his brewing friendship with him further causes him to hesitate to help out.

As comedy would dictate, Cage eventually accepts, yet is terrible at his new job, nearly getting himself killed and barely able to do virtually any aspect of what is required of him, but he's the CIA's only shot at getting Javi. Things go from bonkers to absolutely haywire with every misstep, but he is sure to remind those listening to him that really, when you think about it, being a spy is not that different from being an actor. More fun at the insupportableness of some actors.   

It would be tempting to write that fans of Nicolas Cage would enjoy the film because, well, virtually everyone is a fan of him. Fans of his films will certainly be thrilled at the various references to his movies, with shout-outs to everything from Captain Corelli's Mandolin to The Rock to even Guarding Tess. However, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is disappointingly unfunny, with most of the jokes aiming for cute references; in many respects, it's simply the same joke over and over again, with countless shout-outs to Cage's films and jokes about his acting and spending habits. What few laughs (or chuckles) are actually in the film are those that are provoked by Pascal. Cage may be the top star of this film and the one who's been criss-crossing the country to promote it, but Pascal is the one who is undoubtedly funnier. Though I was ultimately disappointed in the film, I will confess that I did find the bromance between the two to be charming. 

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Narc

When Ray Liotta passed away last week at the age of sixty-seven, virtually ever publication labeled him as "Goodfellas star." Some of them might have also mentioned his supporting role in Field of Dreams as Shoeless Joe Jackson, but all of them mentioned Goodfellas, the iconic gangster 1990 flick directed by Martin Scorsese and co-starring Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci that made him a star. It got to the point that it almost immediately prompted Nick Schrager to write that "Ray Liotta was so much more than Goodfellas." 

This is self-evident. The obituaries that did want to discuss more than Goodfellas or Field of Dreams likely mentioned motion pictures like Something Wild, Cop Land, Hannibal, Blow, Heartbreakers, Killing Them Softly, The Place Beyond the Pines, Marriage Story, and The Many Saints of Newark. Many of them mentioned Narc, as well, which is almost surprising given that it's probably the least-known of the films mentioned. Of his performance in Narc, Schrager wrote that Liotta's role was "a lead performance that remains one of his finest, full of ferocity, despair, and sorrow that so often defined his work." In Narc, Liotta was essentially as good as he had ever been in any of his more famous films. 

His Henry Oak, a lieutenant detective obsessed with finding the killers of his partner, is crass, impatient, impulsive, violent, and terrifying, making him come across as an even more maniacal Popeye Doyle, which is quite the accomplishment. Narc expectedly contains a lot of arguing, crying, swearing, bullets flying, and stuff like that, which means it might not be for everyone. But the most realistic scene, and the one that features both Liotta and his co-star Jason Patric's best acting in the movie, is the moment they sit and talk about their wives. There is an intensity in Narc, even from the get-go, that might feel nauseating to many. But the quiet moments between Patric and the late Liotta are superb.

The film opens with Patric's undercover narcotics officer named Nick Tellis desperately chasing a drug dealer in Detroit. Even though the criminal is shot and killed, the shootout goes awry. Despite this, Tellis is apparently good enough of a cop to be given a second chance, this time trying to solve a murder case which has run into a dead-end. The case involves another undercover cop who was murdered. The police chief (Chi McBride) promises Tellis that if he secures a conviction, he'll get him his precious desk job. (Tellis is married and has a child, and his wife, played by Krista Bridges, has had enough of worrying about him every night.) The police chief has also decided to pair Tellis with Lieutenant Oak (Ray Liotta), despite the chief's warning to Tellis that Oak is a little unhinged. 

All of the police work can feel a little berserk. The depiction of the police—whether they are to be seen as those who keep us safe or those who deliberately harm various communities—could certainly be in the eye of the bolder. Narc was released in 2002 (the same year as HBO's brilliant cop show The Wire), when public confidence in the police was at almost sixty percent; today, after years of high-profile and filmed murders by police officers, that number is under fifty percent. In 2002, one might have seen Liotta's fiendish cruelty as an accurate depiction of unchecked cops and their racist targeting of people of color. But others, particularly younger white male audience members, might have seen the stocky, bearded figure with piercing blue eyes and a menacing shotgun as a heroic figure of justice.  

The screenplay by Joe Carnahan, who also directed the film, would have likely been better suited for a series, just as The Wire was. And its engagement in twists and turns is a little beneath it. However, its realistic dialogue and attention to detail are admirable, as is its incorporation of a Roshomon-style retelling of events. But what you'll really come away from the film is the performances of Jason Patric and, of course, Ray Liotta, who left us too soon. Narc is a fine example of his immense talent.  

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