Okay, so Nicholas Cage seems like a fairly odd guy and he blew through hundreds of millions of dollars by buying 15 homes, a jet, and of course, something everybody needs , a 67 million year old Dinosaur skull. I’ll give all of his critics that, his behavior is odd but I will never say the guy isn’t a fantastic actor and if you don’t agree you should go back and look at the man’s resume.
Cage can and has played every character you can imagine from troubled good guy, to nerdy scientist, to car thief, to private detective, to face transplanted psychopath, to crooked cop, and the list goes on. Cage has a quiet cool about him and his voice and mannerisms are second to none. He may not make crappy movies good but he sure as hell has the ability to make them entertaining. Let’s take a look back at some of his flicks.
First there was The Rock in 1996, it may not have been an Oscar contender but this was a solid action flick. Not a lot of guys can play off of Sean Connery but Cage did it with ease as the slightly geeky Agent Goodspeed, a bomb and chemical weapons specialist who has to deactivate a bunch of insanely dangerous bombs that are being held on Alcatraz by a disgruntled General. Besides this being an awesome movie who can forget when Goodspeed uttered the unforgettable line, “How, in the name of Zeus’s butthole, did you get out of your cell?” That alone was worth the price of admission.
And then in 1997 he followed up with Con Air and Face/Off, that’s a hell of a year in my book. In Con Air, he’s a wrongly imprisoned Army Ranger who says kick ass lines like, “I’m gonna show you God does exist” while he saves a plane that was hi-jacked by a group of his fellow convicts. Face/Off was just incredible and found him playing insanely psychopathic domestic terrorist and overall sicko Castor Troy slash high ranking lawman Sean Archer alongside John Travolta. He kicked ass playing both men and he had his face taken off so extra points for that as well.
In 1999 he played young private investigator Tom Welles who was hired by a wealthy widow to find out why her husband was in possession of a snuff film. This movie showed some serious depravity and in my opinion was one of the best performances of Cage’s career as his character penetrated the filthy world of illegal pornography in order to find out who the girl in said snuff film was.
2000 was another banner year for Cage as he starred in the Family Man and Gone in 60 Seconds. As former car thief Memphis Raines who is forced to come out of retirement to help his brother who is in trouble with a local crime boss, Cage absolutely killed it and brought some serious humor to an action flick and car lover’s dream. In the Family Man, Cage play Jack Campbell plays a wealthy Wall Street player who is shown by an angel of sorts, played by Don Cheadle, what his life would be like had he stayed with his former sweetheart. It turns out he wouldn’t have been rich at all but he would have had a wife, kids, and a house. In the end it turns out that life wins but it’s too late. They didn’t re-invent the wheel but Cage did an awesome job in this tearjerker.
Cage’s 2005 leading role as Dave Spritz in The Weather Man was absolutely brilliant. It’s very rare that a character will make you so depressed you want to cry while making you crack up hysterically every two minutes but Cage did it in this touching film about a man just trying to make his way through life and in Sprit’s words, “prove to my father that I’m not a silly fuck.”
He was also the star of the National Treasure franchise, Ghost Rider, Kick-Ass and many more solid flicks. One of his most recent performances, as Joe Ransom in Joe found him playing an ex-con with a heart of gold that becomes a role model for a downtrodden but ambitious young man and shows him the way of the world despite the poor kid having to deal with his drunken degenerate father. The bottom line is this; Nicolas Cage is an A-list actor, always has been and always will be. He has a bunch of films coming out in the next couple of years so you Nicolas Cage naysayers might want to reconcile yourself with that fact.
Article By: Jon DaBove
