The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (dir. Tom Gormican, 2022)

Nic Cage is a, come si dice, douchecanoe. Hated by his makeup artist wife and her daughter, washed up as a character actor even by the discerning standards of his agent Neil Patrick Harris, this man is a certified hunk of junk. And at this point, who should swagger onto the scene but Pedro Pascal, playing a financially if not ethically lubricated drugs lord- Javi, a private island owning kingpin who provides an unwitting path to redemption for this National Treasure.

Now, let’s be abundantly clear. Nicolas Cage- or his fictionalised version in the movie, ‘Nic Cage’- is not a national treasure. We hate him. He represents America: not just America in its 18th century form, but America in its distinctively modern voice, a whiny, mediocre creature that seems to have a problem with the mildest of disagreements. Put simply, this is an America with a bone to pick. And yet Nic Cage can survive- like the cockroach, like the shrew, he simply gathers himself and rolls on.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent follows Nic Cage (Nicolas Cage) as a lustful, money-hungry cadre of financial vampires dog him across the Iberian peninsula. This fictionalized version of himself, and his average-looking ex-wife, seem deeply embittered about the actions of an Iberian drug carter who have captured the daughter of a rival political clan. And yet, as the incompetent Spymaster Cage blunders his way across a garden variety of white-upholstered Spanish villas, can we not blame him, and his organisation?

From The Diary of Mary Prince to Pirates of the Caribbean, I simply cannot find an example of an ethnic overseer who did not twitch at the urge to revolt against her idiot superior. Nicolas Cage is only the latest in a long and semi distinguished line of these individuals. These men are objectively morons. Are we seriously to believe that Lashana Lynch in 007 didn’t ignore a bunch of sad fat Etonians to preserve the world from the wreckage of 007’s emotional biohazard? I don’t think so; and equally, I will not be held liable to moderating the emotional constipation of the latest meta-Hollywood wankpiece about white jihad.

In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Nic/Nicolas Cage plays a postmodern version of himself, haunted by a gun-toting waxwork that spouts references to Face/Off and other 80s staples as the present of a breakaway ethnonationalist state tries to draw on him as a reference. The resulting imagery offers objectively horrific results; a terribly Irish accented wife (Sharon Horgan) finds herself rivalled only by a freakishly snub-nosed daughter (Lily Mo Sheen), in truth the progeny of Kate Beckinsale and Michael Sheen. Horrific, no?

When Nic (Nicolas? who can tell?) finds himself roped into a vanity project birthday party in the Ibizan tropics for a gun-running coke fiend, the audience of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent find themselves carried on the tide of his sheer charisma. Sure, Cage may be washed up- but who’s found themselves in Odeon Leicester Square on a Tuesday night instead of getting a nice 9 pm curfew? That’s right- it’s your erstwhile reviewer.

But of most importance in this tragic daddy issues saga is the dollar-dollar-bill, y’all. Pedro Pascal’s Javi is the unwitting bitch of his cousin, a Kelloggs’-crunchy-cruncher who wields a gun as easily as a cereal spoon; only when the Gucci loafers pale under a life-or-death situation do Javi, and indeed Nic, realise the importance of a good arch support.

Every ethnic tradition has their own form of fear. On Friday the fifth of May, the Irish electorate will decide as to whether Sinn Fein can patch their broken island together again. The Latin American practice is somewhat more complicated; a sad and yet equally violent path of rugged machismo and internal violence which will, as ever, materialize at the polls. As Nic Cage says- the fictionalised version of the Hollywood A-lister- ‘I should always trust my instincts as a shamanic thespian’. If he goes wrong, we are all lost.