A truffle hunter who lives alone in the Oregon wilderness must return to his past in Portland in search of his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped.
A truffle hunting hermit confronts his past after the kidnapping of his beloved Truffle Pig in Pig. Robin Feld (Nicolas Cage) is a man living on his own in a cabin in the Oregan woods accompanied only by his pet pig, with whom he hunts truffles in the woods that he gives to aspiring restaurant supplier Amir (Alex Wolff). However, one night Rob’s cabin is broken into with the perpetrators taking his pig. With the help of Amir, Rob follows leads into Portland to get his pig back.
Pig is a drama that marks the feature film debut for writer/director Michael Sarnoski. The film stars Nicolas Cage as Robin Feld, who at one time was a celebrated restaurant chef in Portland, but has been living off the grid for a least a decade. When Rob’s prized Truffle Pig is taken from him, he is forced to emerge back in the world, assisted in his search by Amir, who himself is trying to escape from the shadow of his much more successful father Darius (Adam Arkin). As the search goes on, we come to learn how the pig meant more to Rob than just a tool to hunt truffles.
For lack of a better description, most of the output of Nicolas Cage’s career for the last decade or so have been paycheque genre films, most of which would end up going straight to VOD. However, Pig fits more into the mold of Nicolas Cage’s role in David Gordon Green’s 2013 drama Joe. As Pig begins, we know very little about Cage’s character of Robin Feld, who is essentially living as a hermit in the middle of the woods, as he goes hunting for truffles with his pig and bakes himself a rustic pie. However, the layers are peeled back over the course of the film, as we learn Robin to be a man overwhelmed with grief, with his pig being his only companion during his ten years in the wood.
Save for a scene in an underground fight club for chefs, which is probably the closest this film comes to emulating the John Wick series, Pig is a surprisingly nuanced drama that sees Nicolas Cage give one of his better performances in years. With spend just enough time with the titular pig in the film to completely understand why its kidnapping is such a loss for Robin Feld and this is ultimately a film that will leave you with a major case of the feels.