Film Review: Pig

I love it when a film plays with the expectations that its audience might have of it. I have a particular fondness for films that imply one kind of movie based on its premise, but delivers something completely different with its approach. Some recent examples being films like Butt Boy or The Kid Detective, both of which I really dug. The same can be used to describe Michael Sarnoski’s directorial debut, Pig, which stars Nicolas Cage as Rob, a truffle hunter who lives in solitude in the woods with his pig. In the dead of night, his home is broken into, and the pig is stolen.

Given the sort of memeification of Nicolas Cage’s body of work, it’s no surprise that the jokes following the release of the trailer revolved around how the film is going to basically be “John Wick with a pig.” I won’t say it’s totally unwarranted, I think the folks making the trailer knew what they were doing when they ended it with the line “who has my pig?” with a close-up of Cage’s beaten and bruised face. The filmmakers are very aware of what you might expect from a movie like this, but once Rob goes on a journey with Amir (Alex Wolff), a young, ambitious hustler who regularly buys his truffle, things take a far more interesting turn.

While the movie certainly isn’t devoid of violence, it plays out more like a drama, a character study. A look at a man who left behind a life of luxury following a personal tragedy, as we soon find out that he was once a big time chef, whose reputation still captures the attention and respect of folks who used to work for him back in the day. There’s an incredible scene where he reminds Finway (David Knell), a chef who used to work under him, of his dreams of opening a pub, which he has now abandoned to run a restaurant that is more hip, more modern, and significantly more pretentious.

The film itself certainly has quite a bit of thoughts regarding the state of modern cuisine from the lack of personality to the lip service about serving local ingredients and traditions to the way spectacle often overpowers quality technique. One can’t help but wonder if Michael Sarnoski and his co-writer, Vanessa Block, share some of the opinions of their salt-of-the-Earth lead. Rob was clearly a passionate and devoted chef at one point, he remembers every dish he made, and every person he served. It was something he truly cared about, and as he says so himself, “we don’t get a lot of things to really care about.”

Some of these moments where the film digs into modern cooking culture, especially with the business behind it, there is an element of dark comedy involved. But as the film goes on, the film grows more and more somber. It hits a peak when we bring in Darius (Adam Arkin), Amir’s detached and cold-hearted father. Their relationship get a bit of exploration, and connects to the main journey in a way that isn’t super surprising, but it still manages to lead into some genuinely moving and affecting moments, especially towards the end. I won’t give away the payoff, but it really resonates in a way that caught me totally off-guard.

It might seem like a silly thing to say given the premise, but Pig is a film that brings real and interesting human insight. Looking into how we treat one another, the way we relate to one another, how we leave a legacy behind through the bonds we make at any given moment. Michael Sarnoski is taking a huge swing with the approach he decided to go with for this story, and I think it’s a total home run. It helps that you have someone like Nicolas Cage leading the way because only someone with his level of earnest commitment could take something like this seriously and make you really feel the emotions that the filmmakers are trying to pull off. He truly gives one of his finest performances here. I was mesmerized by Pig, it works so much better than one would expect. While some might not be so well suited to its slow burn approach, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, keeping things at a brief 90 minutes, and if I were to nitpick anything else, I would say some of the handheld camerawork was a bit too aggressive at several points. Aside from that, Pig is a wonderful film. I’m amazed at how it brings heart and soul to absurd material, and it’s one I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

Pig is now out in select theaters.