The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent / *** (R)

 

Nick Cage: Nicolas Cage

Javi Gutierrez: Pedro Pascal

Vivian: Tiffany Haddish

Olivia: Sharon Horgan

Lucas Gutierrez: Paco León

Richard Fink: Neil Patrick Harris

Addy Cage: Lily Sheen

Gabriella: Alessandra Mastronardi

Carlos: Jacob Scipio

Martin: Ike Barinholtz

Nicky: Nicolas Kim Coppola

Lionsgate presents a film directed by Tom Gormican. Written by Gormican & Kevin Etten. Running time: 107 min. Rated R (for language throughout, some sexual references, drug use and violence).

Oh, how we love Nicolas Cage. He’s an actor about which I’ve never heard anyone say, “I hate that guy.” And I’ve heard people say that about many a great actor. We love him when he’s good, and we love him even more when he’s bad. We love his great movies, like Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, and his Oscar-winning performance in Leaving Las Vegas. We love him in over-the-top action films, like The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off. We even like him in movies that we hate, like The Wicker Man, Drive Angry, and (count them) two whole Ghost Rider movies. This is probably because Cage has the ability to let all self-consciousness go as the role requires, which makes him the perfect subject for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

You might go into this movie thinking it was written specifically for Cage. Maybe it was. I don’t know. However, the filmmakers really could’ve chosen any aging Hollywood star who seems to have his best roles behind him. It is no surprise, though, that it was Cage who was willing to put himself out there as the subject of a film in which he plays a version of himself named Nick that is so desperate for a gig that he agrees to make a birthday appearance at an eccentric European billionaire’s party for $1 million. What Nick is unaware of is that despite the fact that Javi is a superfan of his, he is also suspected by the CIA to be the head of a major crime cartel. On his way to the gig, a CIA agent, Vivian, recruits Cage to help them gather intel and locate the kidnapped daughter of a politician being manipulated by the cartel.

With Cage perfectly cast in the lead role, it’s no surprise that he is surrounded by an amazing supporting cast. Hot of his success in quirky roles in Wonder Woman 1984 and the Disney+ television series The Mandalorian, Pedro Pascal plays the rather strange Javi in such a way it is hard to tell whether the CIA has mistakenly identified him as a vicious crime lord or he is just good at separating his fanatic love of all things Cage from his criminal calling. Tiffany Hadish and Ike Barinholtz are given the task of representing America’s possibly faulty world police as the CIA agents in charge of the rescue operation. Using Cage to achieve their goals is a questionable approach to say the least and the two squeeze a great deal of comedy out of that premise, but unfortunately, are under-utilized in the film’s plot as a whole. I definitely would’ve liked to have seen much more of both of these actors. 

British actress Sharon Horgan, who has had a great deal of success as a comedienne in her home country in television shows like Catastrophe and The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, plays Cage’s ex-wife, Olivia, who along with their daughter inadvertently gets mixed up in the strange plot that he finds himself. Olivia is fed up with Cage’s inability to be present as a father to their daughter, Addy (Lily Sheen). There is no correlation between Olivia and Addy and any of Cage’s real life family, but Horgan does a wonderful job balancing the scales of the ridiculousness of Cage’s life as a famous actor and helping to ground this heightened world with a sense of reality to make the audience believe these characters are real. Finally, Neil Patrick Harris is Cage’s aptly-named talent agent, Richard Fink. Although Harris plays the constantly pivoting character perfectly, I do wonder whether Fink might’ve been served better with a less famous actor in the role. I kept expecting that Harris was also playing a version of himself, rather than someone who wasn’t famous.

Cage even gets the chance to provide two versions of himself to the audience as he is often visited by a younger version of himself, seemingly modeled after his role in David Lynch’s Wild At Heart. The younger Cage goads the “real” Cage to take more risks and grab life by the balls, the way he’s rumored to have in his younger years in Hollywood. This is where the audience really gets to enjoy that over-the-top flair that Cage so often uses in some of his more questionable projects, like Vampire’s Kiss and Deadfall. 

The success of the movie really falls on the shoulders of both Cage and Pascal, however, as their budding friendship is key to both the plot of the film and its comedy. There is a wonderful scene when they’re being chased through a beautiful Tuscan village by men with guns not long after they’ve dropped some acid together. In a moment of respite, paranoia begins to set in with Pascal as he begins to think just about any random person on the street could be someone who wants to kill them. Cage is starting to get into his own eccentric groove at this point and the way their two performances compliment and conflict with each other is just comedic perfection.

I am unfamiliar with writer and director Tom Gormican’s previous film That Awkward Moment, but I did watch the television show he created, Ghosted. He seems to specialize in putting opposing characters into serious situations that he approaches from a comedic point of view. That is certainly the realm in which this film is operating but with a particularly meta bent due to the fact that Cage is playing a version of himself. What this film is particularly adept at is navigating the real conflicts and self-interests involved in such an endeavor. Cage is constantly conflicted because he feels he must work but his recent output has been artistically negligible. He wants to be a good dad, but is out of touch with any aspects of what that entails. And he wants to be a real life hero and help the CIA but has found what he feels to be a genuine friend in Javi. Surprisingly, this isn’t the one of the most Nicolas Cagey Nicolas Cage movies you’ll ever see, but it is one that knows exactly what it is and uses that knowledge to make it a better Nicolas Cage movie than a great deal of them out there.