These days when you think of Nicolas Cage one usually thinks of an overacting weirdo with an amazing assortment of hair pieces. Little do most people know that Nic Cage used to be awesome. Don’t believe me, check out some of his early work: Raising Arizona, Red Rock West and Moonstruck. Here was an young actor making a name for himself with intense performances in films that weren’t very easy to categorize. So what happened? Nic Cage won and Oscar, that’s what happened.
After getting a much deserved Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas, Cage did the next logical thing and set out to become an action star. Makes sense to me. What followed are what I like to call his dark years (The Rock, Con-Air, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Ghost Rider, Next, National Treasure) where Cage changed his acting style from quirky and intense, to scenery chewing and spastic. It was also at this time that he started to lose his hair and in each movie he wore a more and more distracting toupee.
http://www.latinoreview.com/news/celebrating-the-hairstyles-of-nicolas-cage-5254
Granted there have been a few exceptions, Matchstick Men and Adaptation were pretty solid, but for the last decade Cage has been going for style over substance.
Then 2009 came and Cage decided to make good movies again. His stratagy was simple; team up with good directors. First he worked with Alex Proyas in Knowing, which wasn’t a fantastic movie but, again, was pretty solid and sneaked it’s way on to a few critics best of lists this year.
Later on in the year Cage teamed up with Werner Herzog, which resulted in a perfect storm of insantiy that was Bad Liutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Cage played a drug addicted cop in over his head, but he played it so well that I thought he might be taking the method approach and smoking crack in between takes.
For those unfamiliar with Herzog, he got shot in the stomach with a pellet gun while giving an outdoor interview and shrugged it off like it was nothing, as well as opened up a film school whose main emphasis was on lock picking and trespassing, but I digress.
Cage will no doubt go back to making shitty movies, a Ghost Rider 2 is listed as in development, but before he does he promises to give us one last awesome performance in Mathew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass. I’m not going to give you any context, I’m just going to let clip from Kick-Ass and this picture from Bad Lt. sum up my article as proof that Nic Cage is awesome again.
