Bearded, bloodied and making his few words count, an entirely different Nicolas Cage shows up for this fascinating indie, neither a font of meme-able rage moments nor the Taken–like revenge thriller you may be expecting. The actor plays Rob, a woods-dwelling Oregonian whose prized truffle-hunting pig, Apple, is stolen in a scene of shocking home-invasion. We know little about what his life was like before that violent moment — not yet, at least — but the man who emerges from the tree line, more wild-eyed and haunted than the Cage in Alan Parker’s Birdy, is something we’ve never seen before. It’s like a Bigfoot sighting.
Pignapping could do that to a person, but it can’t be the whole story. What makes the rest of the film special isn’t Cage’s single-minded quest for Apple but the world he re-enters: a Portland haute-cuisine dining scene that’s almost comically cutthroat (it even has its own secret fight club). Rob’s only connection to human beings is a Camaro-driving truffle-dealer and wannabe hotshot named Amir (Alex Wolff, tapping oceans of squirmy insecurity), who chauffeurs him around to various exclusive restaurants. The dynamic feels like the one in Rain Man between Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise: “He’s Buddhist,” says Amir apologetically to a gatekeeper.
You begin to notice how confidently Cage moves through kitchens. Everyone keeps Rob at a wary distance, and that intimidation is a clue to his past. Once in a while, Pig falls into middlebrow foodie-movie clichés (ah, the power of a simple salted baguette), but for the most part, debuting writer-director Michael Sarnoski seasons his tale of personal apocalypse with a light hand. He’s given his star — so often dwarfed by his own worst instincts — a pathway back to something real, and that’s a gift that won’t be fully appreciated for a while. The film’s earthy flavours linger. It’s the aroma of redemption.
