Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

So, in 1992 Abel Ferrara directed a film called 'Bad Lieutenant', starring Harvey Keitel as a corrupt and depraved police officer. Then in 2009 Werner Herzog makes this film, starring Nicolas Cage, about a police officer with some personal issues, let us say, and with a similar title. This annoyed Ferrara, at least initially, and caused a certain amount of confusion as to the relationship of this film to the earlier one. Given that the 1992 film is a completely uncompromising depiction of someone with drug and gambling addictions whose life is spiralling out of control, I wondered whether the Herzog-Cage combo could produce anything more gross. Turns out the answer is 'no', for the simple reason that there is no meaningful connection between the two films, and that this film is aiming for something quite different, a kind of deranged black comedy.  In comparison to the 1992 film this one is almost a feel-good popcorn movie.   Well OK, that may be overstating it, because...

The critics gave the thumbs up to this weird film, especially Nicholas Cage's performance. If I was being unkind I might attribute this to what I call Prodigal Son Syndrome i.e. critics going overboard if a director or actor turns in a half-decent performance after a series of duds. But you have to hand it to Cage, it's hard to imagine anyone else being able to make this slight but ridiculous story anywhere near believable, let alone get you to be emotionally invested. Cage is Robin, a magnificent chef, once the toast of Portland, who for many years has lived as a recluse in the woods following the death of his wife Lori.  His only companion is a pig who hunts out the best truffles, which are sold to a young guy called Amir. Unfortunately the pig is stolen, which drives Robin to the desperate act (for him) of returning to Portland to try to retrieve his pig, with Amir reluctantly in tow.  We then get some rather odd encounters, the strangest of which involves some kind of figh...

This is the middle of three action films that Nicolas Cage starred in over a two-year period (1996-97), the others being 'The Rock' and 'Face/Off'.  All three are OK, but I found this one to be the most fun, for most of the running time at least.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that for a film of this type the dialogue is surprisingly witty, with John Malkovich in particular enjoying himself as Cyrus 'The Virus'.  It moves along at a good pace, and has a great supporting cast, featuring among others Steve Buscemi and Ving Rhames.  Unusually we also get to see John Cusack in an action film, as a US Marshal who has to try to work out what Cyrus's plan is.  The film starts to become less fun for me towards the end when Cusack gets directly involved in the action, concluding with  an absurd crash landing of a plane on the Las Vegas strip, when we are supposed to believe there are no civilian casualties. As for Nicolas Cage, he makes even less attempt than u...