Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Pig’ on Hulu, in Which Nicolas Cage Defies Expectations by Playing a Hobo Without a Shotgun

Now on Hulu, director Michael Sarnoski’s debut feature Pig casts Nicolas Cage as a reclusive, and undoubtedly very very smelly, ex-chef who hunts truffles with his pet pig by day and retires to his windowless shack in the woods by night. This is the type of premise that has us Cageophiles — you know, we who struggle to narrow down our list of 10 favorite Cage movies — pumping an enthusiastic fist in anticipation. But this film is not at all keen on indulging our expectations, which ultimately is a good thing.

PIG: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Robin Feld — or Robin — make it just Rob (Cage) — kneels down, picks up some soil from the ground on the edge of his knife, and tastes it. Two minutes in, and Nicolas Cage is eating dirt. Rob’s funny little pig snorts and huffs; he digs a bit, and unearths a treasure, a black truffle. He sniffs it. Good job, pig. (That’ll do? That’ll do.) Back at camp, Rob presses scratch-made dough into a pie pan, and a poof of flour floats down to the pig, who adorably shakes it off. He chops mushrooms and sautees them in a cast iron pan, and soon bites from a wedge of what appears to be a savory succulent roasted earthy tart. He shares it with the pig. Our stomachs grumble.

The next day, Rob is mending a garment when we hear the rumble of a car engine accompanied by blaring classical music. Amir (Alex Wolff) gets out of his canary-yellow Camaro, tells the pig to get the F away and purchases a cooler full of truffles from Rob, who barely looks up from his needle and thread. He doesn’t hide his disdain from this obnoxious phony. Amir tries to chat — “Sure you don’t want one of those camp showers?” — and Rob grunts his replies. Rob’s hair is a shoulder-length tangle and his beard is unkempt and his clothing is permanently grubby and he tolerates Amir, because this business is surely a necessity. In the dead dark of that subsequent night, the pig seems spooked. Coyotes howl in the distance. The door bursts open and there’s a scuffle and voices and squealing, and then a clang and a thud as Rob and the camera hit the floor. He awakens, peels his face from a sticky patch of blood. The pig is gone. The door is propped open with his cast iron pan.

Rob doesn’t bother to wash the blood and filth from his face before he fails to start up a battered old truck and then hoofs it down the road to the nearest patch of civilization, a bar-restaurant we would’ve described as “rustic” before we saw how Rob lives. He asks for a woman who’s been dead for a decade, then asks to use the phone. Amir pulls up in his stupid-ass Camaro. He’s going to help Rob. He’s going to help Rob find his pig.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Please set aside your John Wick comparisons — that movie was about violent revenge, and this one isn’t. For a while, Pig is a Cageophile’s dream: What if Nic Cage was cast in First Cow? And then it becomes something strange but meaningful like Krisha, and something that’s almost wholly its own thing.

Performance Worth Watching: This is Cage’s most assured, detailed and nuanced work since hardly anybody saw him in David Gordon Green’s extraordinary 2013 effort Joe. Cage’s muted, but fiery performance as a deeply grief-stricken man will easily rank among his best.

Memorable Dialogue: Cage cuts through the Earth’s crust with the incisive delivery of this line: “We don’t get a lot of things to really care about.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The last Cage film I saw was Willy’s Wonderland, in which he played a silent-but-deadly man-slab who pummels the terrifying life out of haunted animatronic kiddie-arcade mascots. So much of his career in the last decade has seen him graduate from A-list Oscar winner to a strange neverland of such neo-grind junk — junk that sets expectations for Pig that Sarnoski shrewdly defies. Werner Herzog famously indulged Cage’s extremity for an outrageously eye-bulging performance in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans; Pig is its flip side, Cage playing a bottled-up character who seems primed to explode, and just… doesn’t. Sure, he enjoys an outburst or two, not to entertain us, but because Rob is subject to the compulsions of his raw humanity. He’s vulnerable, not volatile.

But Rob is extraordinary, a former superstar of cuisine in Portland, Oregon, where his name carries significant weight even a decade-and-a-half after he disappeared into the forest. (Apropos of nothing, save for maybe the advancement of the plot, he also has a photographic memory.) His status allows him to navigate the weird underworld of the city’s culinary scene, where, in the movie’s strangest moments, restaurant workers venture into an underground basement and bet on how long a homeless man will remain standing as he’s beaten by an angry sous chef or server or busboy.

Sarnoski cultivates an odd heightened reality in which Rob, the hobo without a shotgun, can wield his influence, often by slashing through superficiality with a vengeance. Amir shares details about his dysfunctional relationship with his father, a local “rare foods king” who carries himself like a don, and Rob replies by painting a vivid picture of Portland’s inevitable demise by earthquake and tsunami: None of this matters. Rob meets a former kitchen employee who’s now the chef at a trendy restaurant with an absurd high concept, and this poor man, who pursued commercial success over his passion, can only stammer a reply through a pained, fake smile. Cage doesn’t need to wield his action-movie fists. Here, his intensity is channeled through apocalyptic speeches delivered with measured, clarified rage. He’s very quietly terrifying — but we know better. Credit Cage’s performance for that.

Pig’s slippery tone and episodic plotting may not appeal to everyone’s cinematic palate. The film is dramatically gripping and subtly funny, an odd melange of character study, cultural satire, B-revenge flick and buddy comedy (Cage and Wolff enjoy some nicely understated crazy old coot/clueless upstart chemistry). But its eccentricities — and the occasional what-do-you-make-of-THAT moment — turn the dramatic familiarities of people working through grief and depression into a much more distinctive, memorable and emotionally resonant story. I’ll quote Rob again: “We don’t get a lot of things to really care about.” That’s it. That’s the point. That’s the truth.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Pig is one of the year’s best films.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Pig