There is a lot more good than bad in this movie. While it's true that it head feints at action to pull you into a metaphorical journey into grief and loss, it stays quiet and engaging for the duration. In that sense it seemed like an even more dialed down 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' styled movie, focused less on the crime itself, but on the crime as a pebble tossed onto a seemingly placid pond...creating ripples.
The plot is simple...Cage is man who has given up on life, living alone in the woods with a Truffle Hunting Pig. The Pig gets stolen. Nick wants his pig back. So..the guy that he sells his truffles to helps him...and that leads back into the Town he has abandoned.
There we learn who he was, why he left, the burnt bridges that he left behind. But we also learn that his young business partner has a similar story of loss and regret that parallels and intersects with Cage's.
This is slight spoiler. They fool us with a really crappy plot device. The first place Nick goes when he hits town is to see an old friend who just happens to run some kind of secret fight club for the restaurant crowd of Portland. Talk about a WTF? All I can think is that they wanted us to think we were going to see a violent revenge drama. But considering what this story was about, the entire scenario is truly bizarre and out of place. The rest of the movie has us accept that Nick walks around for two days with serious injuries that he never bothers to clean up, as well as the idea that all of our waiters perhaps secretly go into dilapidated basement arenas to win prizes taking beatings for money.
But after that we get back to this very quiet movie about this broken man who finally faces his demons, and then tries to repair some other people because he realizes what being human and losing what you love does to everyone. (As Hemmingway put it: The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places).
Alex Wolff shares the most time with Cage, and he does a great job. My biggest criticism of the film is it could have done a little better job in getting us to relate to the conflict between his character and his father (played with dignity and strength by Adam Arkin). Wolff is the fulcrum that balances Cage's Rob character's tragic story against Arkin's Darius character's similar arc. Where Rob broke into retreat, Darius broke into ruthlessness. And both seem to know the other's back story and measure their pain against each other.
In the end, neither man can be fixed. They just return to their lives more aware that they are damaged. The beginning of the healing process is where we leave them both. Amir (Wolff's character) sleeps alone in his beloved car. We don't know which way he will go.
The acting in this movie alone makes it well worth watching. I recommend it.
The plot is simple...Cage is man who has given up on life, living alone in the woods with a Truffle Hunting Pig. The Pig gets stolen. Nick wants his pig back. So..the guy that he sells his truffles to helps him...and that leads back into the Town he has abandoned.
There we learn who he was, why he left, the burnt bridges that he left behind. But we also learn that his young business partner has a similar story of loss and regret that parallels and intersects with Cage's.
This is slight spoiler. They fool us with a really crappy plot device. The first place Nick goes when he hits town is to see an old friend who just happens to run some kind of secret fight club for the restaurant crowd of Portland. Talk about a WTF? All I can think is that they wanted us to think we were going to see a violent revenge drama. But considering what this story was about, the entire scenario is truly bizarre and out of place. The rest of the movie has us accept that Nick walks around for two days with serious injuries that he never bothers to clean up, as well as the idea that all of our waiters perhaps secretly go into dilapidated basement arenas to win prizes taking beatings for money.
But after that we get back to this very quiet movie about this broken man who finally faces his demons, and then tries to repair some other people because he realizes what being human and losing what you love does to everyone. (As Hemmingway put it: The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places).
Alex Wolff shares the most time with Cage, and he does a great job. My biggest criticism of the film is it could have done a little better job in getting us to relate to the conflict between his character and his father (played with dignity and strength by Adam Arkin). Wolff is the fulcrum that balances Cage's Rob character's tragic story against Arkin's Darius character's similar arc. Where Rob broke into retreat, Darius broke into ruthlessness. And both seem to know the other's back story and measure their pain against each other.
In the end, neither man can be fixed. They just return to their lives more aware that they are damaged. The beginning of the healing process is where we leave them both. Amir (Wolff's character) sleeps alone in his beloved car. We don't know which way he will go.
The acting in this movie alone makes it well worth watching. I recommend it.
