107 min | R | April 22, 2022 | Lionsgate
Nicolas Cage plays a washed-up actor named Nick Cage who takes a million dollars to attend a superfan’s birthday party. The superfan turns out to be an arms dealer, and the CIA wants Cage to spy on him. The gimmick is the whole meal, and Cage knows exactly how to serve it.
Nick Cage is broke, divorced, and convinced his career is over. He owes six hundred thousand dollars to a hotel and his agent has nothing for him. So he flies to Mallorca to collect a million dollars for showing up at a rich fan’s birthday. The fan, Javi Gutierrez, runs an olive farm and a private arms empire, and the CIA recruits Cage to surveil him. This is a movie about a movie star playing himself, and underneath the meta packaging it is a film about a man learning he never actually quit loving his own work.
Nicolas Cage plays Nick Cage as a needy egomaniac who argues with a younger, leather-jacketed CGI version of himself in mirrors and dreams. The bit could collapse into smug self-reference. Cage keeps it grounded by playing the desperation straight. Pedro Pascal plays Javi as a sweet, anxious cinephile who has written a script and wants his hero to read it. The chemistry between Pascal and Cage is the engine of the film, and the best stretch is the two of them on LSD, terrified and bonding. Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz play the CIA handlers as broad comic relief that the film does not need.
Tom Gormican directs from a script he wrote with Kevin Etten, and he structures the comedy around the gap between Cage’s catalog and Cage’s self-image. The film stages whole scenes as the kind of action sequence Javi keeps pitching, and the editing cuts between the spy-thriller the characters imagine and the friendship they are actually living. Gormican loads the frame with deep-cut references to Cage’s filmography, from a gold pistol to a callback to “Guarding Tess.” The Mallorca locations give the thing a sun-drenched glossiness that flatters the absurdity. The action third act arrives on schedule and is the weakest part, because the movie is funnier as two men talking than as a chase.
The film knows it has one idea and commits to it with affection rather than cruelty. It never mocks Cage. It treats his sincerity and his excess as the same admirable quality. The result coasts on charm and the goodwill of watching an actor metabolize his own legend in real time. That is enough to carry the premise, and it is not quite enough to make the premise into more than a very good party trick.