The poster for Nicholas Cage’s 2021 movie, Pig, features a grizzled, blood-stained Cage backset by an ominous shadow. And after watching the trailer, I figured Pig would be just another installment to the growing library of revenge films. But instead of the bloodbath of retribution I’ve come to expect from the genre, Pig feels more sleight of hand. While it manages to maintain the dark aesthetic and typical character cast, something more powerful emerges to break the cycle of revenge.
In Pig, Robin Feld (Nicholas Cage) is a renowned chef turned hermit living in the woods outside of Portland, Oregon with his beloved pet pig. Rob splits his time foraging for truffles with his pig and shuffling through the memories of his late wife, Lori. His pig, the sole companion in a life marked with mourning and withdrawal.
To make ends meet, Rob sells his truffles to Amir (Alex Wolff), a wishful food distributor desperate to make a name for himself in the Portland food scene. Amir is the polar opposite of Rob. He is well-dressed, lives in a high-rise apartment, drives a nice car, and is consumed by the pursuit of success. Amir’s character functions as the personification of the restaurant industry. One where image is everything, failure is devastating, and success is determined more by the acclaim and persona of a restaurant rather than the food it actually serves. Underneath Amir’s skin-deep desire festers a tenuous relationship with his father Darius (Adam Arkin), the kingpin restaurant owner in the city.
The grizzled Rob and dapper Amir inhabit two ends of the spectrum, but when Rob’s cabin is invaded and his pig stolen in the dead of night, he sees no other choice but to enter back into the world with Amir as his guide. And with Rob’s bottled-up despair and sole companion snatched from his side, the table is set for him to exact cold and deliberate revenge.
With each minute that passed, I waited for my palette of retribution to be quenched. But often, Pig delivered the opposite. All of the tropes are the same, but different. Instead of the Russian Mafia, the underworld of Gotham, or the kingpins of the sex-trade industry, Rob is up against ruthless … restaurant owners? Pig assumes that whatever you choose to call evil in the world does not lurk in the shadows, but hides in plain sight. If this evil can work its way into righteous farm-to-table establishments, then it must be more pervasive than we give it credit for.
And then there’s Nicholas Cage, known for his over-the-top acting and infamous, meme-able “Cage Rage.” Rob, however, is a subdued character who rarely speaks above a mutter. Far from a polished protagonist, Rob is a walking punching bag donning the bruises and bloody wounds from the initial break-in throughout the entire movie — wounds that seem to symbolize the inner turmoil and pain he felt returning to a world he had shared with his wife. Each street corner and smell a painful gut-punch of grief.
Why do movie franchises like John Wick and The Equalizer keep coming out with sequels? Aside from the money grab another installment brings, the cycle of revenge is addictive, providing the thrill of vindication through stylized violence often under the guise of a justifiable cause. Pig makes for a pretty lousy revenge film. John Wick this is not. Rob chooses to fight by other means. Instead of hand-to-hand combat, Rob gives pointers on French toast and lessons about a persimmon tree. He rebukes a sell-out chef at his restaurant and slowly breaks down Amir’s walls. With childlike vulnerability, Amir shares with Rob that the happiest he’s ever seen his parents was after they had had a meal at Rob’s former restaurant.
This flash of tenderness just as quickly dissolves when Rob finds out it was Amir’s father Darius who stole his pig. Rob, in a last-ditch effort, devises a plan of rescue. But instead of harnessing culinary vengeance, and creatively dismembering Darius with cooking equipment, he uses his chef’s knife to prepare a peace offering; Rob sets the table for his enemy and feeds him. Mercy is measured out in tablespoons of olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt, and simmered on low heat. With care, Rob replicates the meal that he served to Darius and his wife all of those years before. And with one bite, the strike of compassion lands a more severe blow than any bullet ever could. Moved to tears, Darius can barely lift the fork to his mouth. The smell, the taste, the sight of this meal supplanting the cold-hearted man into the warmest memory he’s ever known. Through it, the truth of the situation is revealed, confession ensues, and hardened men weep. The meal functioning as a rescue vessel, the ripples of hope and healing, though faint, advancing nonetheless.
The dish this film chooses to serve is not revenge, but mercy, one that is difficult to keep at arm’s length. Instead of providing the viewer an outlet to revel in righteous retribution, the film functions more like an RSVP to consider what the giving and receiving of mercy might entail. Like the first dinner guests the host invites in Luke 14, I find myself filtering through excuses of why I can’t attend. Like Darius, the aroma of a peace offering is almost too much to bear. It is a feast I’m prone to push away.
And yet in the upside-down world of Jesus, the invitation stands, the table is set, and the chef, donning his own scars, has invited his enemies to savor his gifts. As culinary theologian Robert Capon says, “God is eccentric, he has loves, not reasons.” It’s this disarming kind of love that persists and compels the resistant, the desperate, and the hungry to lay it all down at his feet and join him at the table.
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4 responses to “A Revenge That Looks Like Grace”
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Loved this, thank you.
love the movie and love this!
“Rob sets the table for his enemy and feeds him. Mercy is measured out in tablespoons of olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt, and simmered on low heat.”
I LOVED this film. Thank you for this!
I can’t wait to watch this! Thank you for wetting my tastebuds in many ways!!!