It is common knowledge that, as the decades have gone on, Nicolas Cage has become a film genre unto himself. He is a one-man superhero, throwing his entire being into every decision in ways that no other actor can. Everything’s so bold and unexpected, reflective both of madness and, at his best, secret brilliance. Much like any Marvel movie, you know what you can expect when you see him proudly standing on the box art, awaiting you to take the plunge into the insane with an actor so accomplished that you’ll either appreciate his talent or question why he’s working below his potential.
His work is so prolific that there’s a good chance he’s released five movies during the pandemic by now. He likes to work and takes up every opportunity he can regardless as to whether it’s a masterpiece. Exhibit one is Primal (2019), which has recently popped up on Amazon Prime and Hulu and has a pretty great logline for fans of B-Movie scenarios. It’s the type that will make you savor at the potential madness that is in store.
Basically, Cage plays Frank Walsh: a big game hunter who is transporting a 400 lbs. white jaguar on a freighter ship alongside an assassin. Anyone who knows the basic keys to action cinema will understand what happens from there, with one of the deadliest creatures on Earth eventually being freed, leading to an intense plot that, on paper, may not be unlike Alien (1979) with tense claustrophobia and these rich jump scares and action beats that boil the viewer’s blood, making them feel the joy of the simpler things in life.
It’s a fair point to think that this will be in Cage’s wheelhouse. It has so much potential to just dive into a madness that would require his over-acting style to come in handy, the insanity of passengers overwhelming any semblance of reason. Unless the negative reviews got to you first, you’re likely to think that it’s room for a perverse man versus nature story that is high on adrenaline. There’s no way of escape. They’re surrounded by an ocean traveling from Latin America. The only way to survive is to fight to the death.
Then again, it’s all a bit misleading from the opening scene which cuts from a rotting corpse, hung and skinned, to Frank standing in a tree. It’s the type of comical image that convinces you that there is going to be a pseudo-comic approach to this story. He’s reading a magazine about houses, eating a snack out of a tin can he’s attached to his hip. It’s in the small details that make you think immediately that he’s eccentric, an expert hunter who has been doing this for months. You’re wanting to know just what this guy’s deal with. Why is he in the jungle? What are we about to witness?
From there Primal continues to blow its load a bit too early with a moment that likely was a big selling point and ends up being the highlight of the entire journey. Frank jumps out of the tree and fights the white jaguar into capture. Sure, you can forgive the shoddy special effects based on the atmosphere the film is oozing, but the moment promises something more wild and chaotic than what is actually given. Primal is not concerned about Cage fighting a jaguar. It’s more interested in the ride home to Long Beach, CA in the United States.
Which is fine, but the supporting cast is nowhere near as exciting as that five-minute stretch that opens the film. He has a jerky relationship with Dr. Ellen Taylor (Famke Jansson) that causes him to joke with her. She seems to be the most reasonable person in the film. Everyone else, ranges in terms of competence, down to Richard Loffler (Kevin Durand) who is a highly dangerous assassin locked in his own cage. The plot from here is simple: keep everyone locked up or face potential doom.
It would help if the supporting characters were at all interesting. The exposition and cool-down between the first scene and the boat trip are a bit interminable. It has very little that’s engaging, getting the point across but needing desperately to get to the next part of the story, where the fun will start. This isn’t a movie with high priorities. All that it wants to do is give us crazy action set pieces, and even then it can’t deliver on things. It prefers to watch every actor go crazy very slowly, but even that isn’t given a fun theatrical treatment. It’s straightforward, giving the audience the obvious and making us eagerly wish that the jaguar would eat them all. These don’t feel like real people. They are husks of characters, and Cage is the only one doing anything memorable with this material, proudly accentuating his words funny and quoting Bugs Bunny to Dr. Taylor.
In a lot of respects, this week’s column is the most abstract A to B that I’ve ever done. The plot between Primal and Mandy (2018) are extremely different. However, I think there’s a good place to more explain why Mandy is a great use of the modern Cage while Primal is reflective of the persona that he’s built in the 21st century, giving people the impression that he stopped caring a long time ago. The truth is that he’s never satisfied enough to repeat himself. He’s constantly pushing the acting game in his own bizarre direction. The issue is that he’s given forgettable nonsense 9 times out of 10 that the prestige crowd will never go for.
Then there’s Mandy. Sweet lord, was there ever Mandy. While I’d go so far as to argue that his other film of that year, Mom and Dad (2018), was also above average, this was the film that reminded audiences of why Cage was a master, why he could be relied upon to deliver a balls-out delirious gem of cinema, making you surprised that an Oscar-winning actor would even think about doing half of the things in this movie. It’s one so accomplished in a tone that it became an immediate sensation for the midnight movie crowd and definitive proof that he’s far from finished.
The simple truth is that you can tell the difference between Primal and Mandy on something as simple as cinematography. Primal is a drab-looking movie, using a green screen to reflect the ocean in the background. It intentionally looks cheap. Meanwhile, Mandy is often dropped into a haze of insane darks and reds, cloudy and foaming with a discomforting Johan Johansson score. It wears its Satanic metal music references on its sleeves. Everything is so accomplished that a single shot is recognizable. So much was put into the atmosphere of this film that it’s almost unfair to judge by its plot.
Cage plays Red Miller, on a quest to save his girlfriend Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough) from a demonic hippie cult who lives in the forest with biker men. Again, it’s a plotline that sounds exciting to Cage fans on paper. The main difference is that any moment where the film doesn’t exist as a hallucinatory haze is given a perfect reason for motivation. By the time that Red starts his journey for vengeance, it’s fully understood why he’s doing it. Mandy clearly is being brainwashed, performing sadistic rituals, and there’s a need for a madman to come to her rescue.
Well… have you heard that Cage plays madmen very well? Whereas it’s your entry point into Primal, in Mandy it’s something that he grows into, finding his purpose as every new detail causes him to feel more pain in his reluctance. He needs to be a hero. He needs to rescue Mandy, and the audience knows. There’s clearly a convincing that this cult is evil. It may be painted in broad strokes, but it’s given more levity than in Primal where we’re just to assume that Richard Loffler is bad because we’re told he is. Again, the cinematography and score of Mandy do a lot of heavy lifting, and it’s transcendent as cinema. Even when a plot point is not being divulged, you’re engrossed in the atmosphere. You know how Mandy feels because director Panos Cosmatos forces you to feel the wooziness. Primal cannot even make you feel the weight of the waves underneath the boat rustling everyone around.
Once you get to the second half, it should be known that this is where it’s Cage’s time to shine. Everyone knows that patience is rewarded in action movies, needing to have moments that pop and give life to these stories. Both are about being stuck in claustrophobic situations where danger lurks around every corner. You should feel tense at every moment.
Primal does this by delivering on its promise, though only in theory. Both dangerous variables are now in motion, and there’s tension in not running into either. The issue is that none of them are really that interesting. Director Nick Powell may have opened with a shot that sparks like firecrackers, but he can’t make the quietness work all that well, needing to rely on conventions so obvious that it causes the build-up to feel a bit dull. Nothing really works. It feels more like the people on board are going about their business, not facing any danger. Even the finale feels a bit underwhelming.
Mandy has its sights set a little higher and is in some ways a satanic panic crossed with a video game. After watching Red prepare for battle by making armor and weapons, he walks into the forest. There is a build-up. We understand what this decision means to him and we can’t wait to see what lies ahead. After all, we’re aware of how crazy the cult actually is. Not only that, but the film will be presented in violent red cinematography, already looking bloody. A patch of dirt on your face will look gross, like a scab. Nothing about it is designed for pleasantness.
It starts with a journey into the bowels of this hell, finding Red waking up in a bathroom, yelling a primal scream, and drinking booze. As he escapes down a rafter, there is something disorienting about this setting. Every new development shocks the audience. Provided you don’t have friends who insisted you watched it because Cage fights a man with a live chainsaw, it’s going to be the most invigorating thing you’ve ever seen. Then again, it actually is because of how real it all feels. The sacrifices he’s making are bold, reflective of an actor who continues to push himself.
By the time he rescues Mandy, he’s sacrificed so much and you understand the weight of this decision. There’s some tragedy in it, feeling like Mandy may not be the same sweet woman she once was. Still, there’s hope that a return to normalcy will be in the works. There are conflicted emotions. All that Primal gives you is a conclusion where the bad guy loses and the white jaguar reaches his destination. It’s not particularly interesting nor is there all that much sacrificed.
What is the big difference? On the one hand, it’s story and budget. Not everything can have evil death cults like Mandy, and yet the idea that a dangerous tiger and a murderer in Primal feels like it shares some similar potential. It doesn’t in large part because it’s so straightforward and conventional. Whatever interesting ideas there are are often resorted to small moments. A wisecracking bird appears that should’ve had more of a supporting role. Everything about it feels like wasted potential and is the perfect embodiment for what people think of Cage when they feel like his better days are behind him. Mandy meanwhile makes you realize what working hard for an insanely dangerous vision can actually achieve.
To be blunt, I don’t intend to do this for every new Cage release. I am not by nature obsessed with every film he’s ever done. While I think he’s had a few really good movies in recent years, he’s generally not my thing and Primal is a reminder of that. He tries to make it work, but it’s still a bad movie. You have to give him credit for elevating a forgettable story, but you could be doing much better things with your life, like watching Mandy again. While I will always respect him for being a crazy go-getter, it’s doubtful that I will check in on his work until someone tells me that I should. His status as a word of mouth savant has been much more rewarding than blind love lately.
Comments
Post a Comment