Oh, God. Oh, my God.
Well, I can record it and yeah, I see that it's recording.
OK. Well, I don't know how this new fangled technology works.
I've only been doing this for almost two years.
You literally work on a computer every day.
Shh. Welcome back to Cajamatch,
calling around about way of meeting Nicholas Cage.
I'm Sean here with my cohost Nick. I'm Nick.
And we have a special episode for you today.
We recorded our leaving Las Vegas kiss of death episode.
And then Peter got burgled and his computer is gone.
Along with that episode, which I thought was probably pretty good.
But you'll never know. Yeah, I'll never know.
I don't remember the things I say after I say them.
So we're pushing that episode back till the end of this bracket
so we can not just have a boring conversation
trying to remember what we said last time.
So in the meantime, we watched Butcher's Crossing,
which is a film that came out last year starring Nicholas Cage and other people.
Yeah. So this film originally like got a can showing
like a year or two ago, like I think in twenty two.
And then finally got a theatrical release last year.
It's pretty clear why they sat on it.
It wasn't it wasn't great.
I can sum up the plot real quick for you.
There isn't one.
Oh, well, there are themes, but there is not a plot.
There are no characters. There is no arc.
Shit happens. And you're meant to feel bad about it at the end.
Yeah. The plot just kind of gets thinner, sort of like the Buffalo herds.
Yeah. So this movie is a big old like Buffalo used to roam free.
And then we fucked up. Yeah.
We fucked up twice because they keep calling it Buffalo and their bison.
Yeah. Oh, God. Get your American bison right.
We've already said more words than anyone says in this entire film.
Oh, that's not fair.
They say things that's just not like important.
They just bitch about like, you know,
like having to eat buffalo meat all the time and being cold.
This movie is 90 percent screensaver.
Yeah. The the B camera team fucking killed it.
They got some great, like establishing shots of like Montana
and the surrounding area there.
I was sure I was being punked at one point because like
there's no connective tissue between most scenes.
There's kind of like this dreamlike state throughout the film
where it's cutting off the
throughout the film, where it's cutting back and forth from a thing
happening to nature, to a thing happening.
And for about 45 minutes, like, OK, that's how the movie goes.
And then they do that. But it is a dream.
Yeah. So real quick, this movie is about I think his name was William.
Yeah. William, who comes out to call.
Well, not Colorado, Wyoming ish or whatever.
I don't know to go on a buffalo hunt
because he wants to see more of the world.
Yeah. Like he's a Harvard kid who dropped out and left.
And this is old timey times, Western times.
So he goes out there.
They still called Native Americans Indians. Yeah.
They he hooks up with Nicholas Cage, who is a relatively discredited hunter.
Like nobody seems to think he's going to do anything
because he sucks at hunting, I guess.
And he does. Cage decides to take them to Colorado
on a big hunt to find some premium hides. Yep.
That's the plot.
All the bison, buffalo, whatever this movie called them are young
and are constantly running from hunters.
So their hides are no good.
They have no fat.
So he knows where there's like a herd of untouched creatures.
So I think the problem that I had the most with this movie is like
the tension never really gets there.
It keeps like wanting to try to build tension in like the isolation
that they feel and the growing concerns between the characters
as to like how long they should stay versus Nicholas Cage's decline
into insanity in just his desire to really maximize this buffalo hunt.
And, you know, he he nearly wipes out a herd of like 4000 buffalo.
And yeah, that's wild.
Constantly little pushes to where maybe there's going to be
character development or character interaction or even character establishment.
Yeah. Like what Nick described to you as the plot of this film
is the first 10 minutes of this film and then the rest of it's just
beautiful shots of nature and occasional Nick Cage screaming.
Yeah. And plenty of like just buffalo being shot over and over in repetition.
And William washing blood off of him and vomiting.
Yeah. At one point, it looked like he was getting sick,
but that didn't become anything.
They when he gets out to Butcher's Crossing,
the town where they start off in, he meets the prettiest little sex worker
in the old west, but sitting on that joke all day.
And but he he can't get it up.
That doesn't come back up in the story.
That's not that there's no point to that.
One of the other I think it was just he's a good Christian boy
because his father was a pastor and he doesn't want to like
get involved in premarital sex and stuff.
She was throwing she was throwing him one.
Yeah. It was going to be free.
But the only time that ever comes up again is the skinner
that comes with them, who has had trouble with the law,
which is the only thing we get to know about him,
thinks she's pretty and keeps talking.
And talks about like twice that he's going to go visit her when they get back.
So you think there's going to be tension there?
No, because we'll just stop talking after 20 minutes in this film.
Yeah. Yeah. He really shuts down.
Now, you mentioned Fred the Skinner.
I thought it was weird that like this movie started out pretty
pretty strong on the this guy sucks.
And it doesn't take long before you're like, oh, no, he's the most sympathetic character.
He's the only sane one.
He's the only one who says like, we should go back.
Yeah. He says the sensible things.
Your dog's taking a shit on the floor.
I literally just took him outside.
Do it, Ben. Drop a steamer.
We'll name it butchers crossing.
Yeah, he's the only one that ever talks sense to William
and to cage about like we can't carry this many hides out.
Why are we still shooting these buffalo?
We are going to get trapped here over the winter.
And they do. Which comes quick.
And like they're having this fight.
So this is an hour and 10 minutes into this film is when like
they're actually having a fight that might lead to tension and story.
And they're yelling and then they get drowned out by audio and then blizzard.
Yeah. Yeah. That blizzard comes in hard and fast, which up in the mountains,
like the Rockies and stuff.
Sure. I could see that coming in quick.
I've seen some really fast snow storms blow in when I lived in Montana.
But but like they they need to leave before winter blizzard.
And then the first time I saw a title card in the movie,
but maybe I blank for an earlier one, but it just says winter.
Oh, yeah. No, they established fall as they were riding out.
And I was like, well, that doesn't bode well if you just declare the time by season.
I miss that. Yeah.
So, yeah, like it snows them in.
The the pass is impassable, which defeats the purpose of a pass.
Yeah. So they get snowed in and cage establishes that it's going to be,
you know, six to eight months before they're able to like get out
with the snow covering the pass.
So it just becomes like a survival
movie without having any of the good elements of a survival movie.
We get some cold like nobody gets frostbite.
Nobody like wanders off in the snow and gets lost or anything like that.
It just misses misses the mark on what this could have been.
The only thing I noticed about this was supposed to be like six to eight weeks.
Of for their trip is how Nick Cage sells it.
They get through winter.
They get to spring. They still have liquor.
Oh, yeah. Well, they established or they they had a very good shopping list.
I think what's his name? Charlie or? Yeah.
Yeah. Crazy Charlie, the one armed wagon driver.
Yeah, he was in charge of the camp.
Yeah, he's a big liquor enthusiast, so I'm sure he had quite the stockpile.
But there was a whole there was a whole part in this film where they like
couldn't find water for two days.
Yeah. Yeah, they did not pack enough water and two days.
That doesn't seem like enough for delirium.
Probably more than two days, but like probably was the this movie shot beautifully.
Yeah. I mean, the DP did a great job.
I think everything was shot really well.
What I find interesting is so to Western
Nick Cage Westerns came out last year, one of them had a plot, but no budget.
One of them had a budget, but no plot.
Yeah, neither of them were really that good.
No. But I think the old way would have been better
if it would have had this budget or looked this good
because a lot of my a lot of what took me out of the old way
was just how bad it looked.
Especially that mustache in the beginning. Yeah.
Also, this is the boldest I think we've ever seen. Nicholas Cage.
Probably. I mean, he's a full shaved.
But he's got like the wildest, thickest beard.
Yeah. Like it's growing almost to his eyes.
Yeah. I don't think we see a lot of Nick Cage shaved head. Yeah.
And he's constantly shaving his head in this movie.
Yeah. Like every other scene, he's keeping it down.
So as they get like they get out of there,
Charlie gets killed because he's trying to poison Fred.
Yes. Fred throws his Bible on the fire.
Yeah. Fred's a dick.
And then Fred dies because the wagon goes over a cliff.
I thought that was such a cheap death after we had like Fred
beating Charlie to death
for trying to poison him with strychnine and not using enough. Yeah.
Just having the axle brake on their way over the pass
and like having the wagon roll back off a cliff.
I was like, oh, that's really limp.
But somehow they managed to retrieve all of the bison pelts.
No, they didn't.
They went back completely empty.
Yeah. But Nick Cage said he had him up in the mountains.
Yeah. He's talking about the ones that they covered up.
There was three thousand pelts that they didn't bring back
because they couldn't carry them all.
They only had like twelve hundred or something.
Yeah. They hid a bunch of pelts up in their camp
so that they could come back and get them in the spring
or whatever when they have another wagon.
Yeah. But then they lose all these pelts.
But spoiler alert, it doesn't fucking matter because while they were going
the pelt trade completely just went under.
Yeah. So what previously was four dollars a hide is now ten cents
or some shit like that.
And now Will's just kind of sitting there and the guy who went out there
to like get a job from it's like, well, do you get what you wanted?
Which I'm like, that's that's a shitty arc.
Yeah. I mean, he did get to see the country and he experienced something
and he lived, but he also got exactly what that guy was telling him
was going to happen.
It's like it's going to change you.
But because we didn't know Will was in the first place, other than he didn't fuck.
Yeah. And because we don't know who he is now because he just stopped talking.
There's no arc to that character.
Yeah. All you know.
OK, let's talk about what we know about each character.
So Will was living in Boston.
He went to Harvard.
He came out to just experience something.
Doesn't have sex.
That's it. That's it.
That that's all we know about that character from the whole movie.
Nick Cage. People don't really trust him.
He hates the fur trader in Butcher's Crossing.
Has a weird like revenge thing with Buffalo.
Yeah, I think he just
been called a poor hunter for so long, like he's just not a good buffalo hunter.
So he's really just trying to prove himself with that.
Yeah. And that that's all we get from him.
Like Charlie one hand superstitious.
Yeah. Drunk a lot.
Fred was in trouble with the law.
It's kind of a dick.
Yeah. And talks about St.
Louis a lot. Yeah.
So that's two strikes against him.
That Francine's a whore.
And Francine is. Yes.
You can't work around that.
OK, we get the mention of them crossing Indian country or,
you know, Native American lands.
And then they make their camp like Nicholas Cage makes their camp
on Native American burial ground.
And then we never have any interactions with any Native Americans.
Well, they establish when they're going through the Native American territories,
they find a shack with a dead hunter in it holding his own balls.
Yeah, that was that was pretty good.
I mean, separated from his body.
Yeah, his balls were cut off and left in his hand.
And they established that it was
the Native Americans who did it.
Yeah, because they don't like hunters.
All right. That's going to come up. Nope.
Yeah. Nope.
We've just got this trading outpost that has no purpose for the rest of the movie.
You can watch this movie like silently and it would make just as it would.
You get just as much out of it.
It might be better if you had like a really good kind of
dark wave, like score.
I'd like and just put the movie on mute and let it let it ride.
I mean, so we know nothing about these characters.
We know even less about Nick Cage.
I feel like we know nothing about him, really,
except he comes back at the end for trades completely gone.
He makes nothing out of this.
So he burns down the fur trader shack, kills the fur trader,
gives one last look to will and rides off.
Yeah, I think actually the smartest thing he did was when he burned
all those hides because I was like, OK, maybe he's like trying to revitalize
the demand by getting rid of all this surplus.
No, that doesn't factor into anything.
He just burns everything and leaves.
Yeah. Which is a pretty baller move.
And then will literally just rides out into the plains.
Yeah. Like there's no even arc about will becoming like an outdoorsman.
No. Yeah, we don't see him ever like start a fire even.
No, the most we get from him is him skinning
buffalo along with the skinner.
Yeah. And well, and like will's one moment in this is trying to get them to
trying to get them to leave without having to confront Nicholas Cage
when he's like Nicholas Cage is trying to herd up the
buffalo that are moving.
And will just start shooting around them to get them to like run faster.
Yeah. Nothing happens in this room.
Yeah. And, you know, it's it's based off of a book.
And I'm assuming there's a narrator.
Yeah, there must be some kind of like
dialogue that happens with the reader that just doesn't translate into the film.
Yeah, that was my thought.
The the writing is really the weakest portion of this, which is unfortunate.
The acting I felt was pretty good.
I really like the guy who played Fred.
I thought he did a great job.
Nick Cage, I enjoyed.
I think he did a good job.
Well, and you said like the B camera team got such great footage.
It would have been nice to see the characters interact with any of that.
Yeah, I was thinking that when I was watching it, like everything shot
so close and tight on the the actors, the characters,
and you never get to see them necessarily in the environment so much.
I mean, there's some wider shots with them riding and whatnot, but it's
you've got such beautiful country.
It's shot in Montana.
And it's really just a backdrop
when it could have been more of a player in the movie. Yeah.
Somebody tried to make a documentary or this is just B roll from a documentary.
It looks like it could have been like planet Earth.
Yeah, like it's really well.
Sure, David Attenborough or like Sigourney Weaver should be talking over this.
And they're like, we got Nick Cage for two days.
Let's make a Buffalo Hunting movie.
So, yeah, beautiful film.
If you want to see some cool, if you just want to see some beautiful, like film,
watch it. Yeah.
I take Nick's advice, put on some like dark wave or something and just zone out.
And, you know, eat a sandwich.
You do you.
So if you could fix this movie, because we're obviously skilled
and equipped to do these sorts of things.
Well, what would you fix in it?
Oh, I'd put a plot in.
I'd put character interaction in.
But shy of that, I would just cut it down to about 25 minutes.
25 minutes of just nature scenes.
Just cut out all the actors.
You can cut down this entire plot and character,
all the character bits to about 25 minutes.
I think I assume I would probably make this more of
like what I would want from this plot wise is something more of like
that survival element from like the Revenant or something like that.
Yeah, so we just need a bear attack.
There wasn't even any like aggressive wildlife.
Yeah, that's weird.
The stakes are real low. Yeah.
It's just a little bit of mild insanity, lots of buffalo meat
and a little bit of strychnine.
So I'm going to give you I'm going to give you I'm going to throw you a bone here, Nick.
I'm going to give you something here. Oh, please do.
There's finally a movie that has less going on than Primal.
Primal is thick with plot.
Definitely go watch Primal.
CG Buffalo. Who do you think is the better hunter?
Nick Cage in Primal or Nick Cage in Butcher's Crossing?
I don't know. He almost wiped out those buffalo and Butcher's Crossing.
Yeah, it almost feels like happenstance that he was able to find them, though.
Yeah, just a real lucky shot.
Where would you put this on the the chart?
You know, I'd say lower good cage.
And medium bad movie.
It's a bad film.
And I just don't think Nick Cage is given anything to do in this movie to like
warrant really a good or bad performance.
Yeah, he smolders, though. He does smolder.
Yeah, he's got kind of like a low burning heat inside of him.
And you do see a little bit of like back and forth.
He does relent in the end.
Like he, you know, gives in and is like, yeah, OK, I fucked up.
I took too long and now we're snowed in here.
And then when they, you know, do finally leave and everything, it's like, OK,
I give let's let's do it.
He just really wants to prove himself because I imagine he gets shit on a lot.
Yeah. And usually you'd have to pay for that.
Will wouldn't have had to unless you hang out with your dog.
It was shit on the dog.
Just the carpet, just that one specific part of the carpet.
He's a puppy. He is.
Get over it, people. Yeah.
What's the weird one is he will pee on the pee pad and poop outside
is outside of the kennel, the pen on the carpet or poop on the pee pad
and then pee on the carpet. Oh, OK.
He won't do both in the same place.
He's a very discerning dog.
Interesting. I guess you just don't shit where you pee.
Good night, everybody.
Bye bye.
And what are you doing?
You're just staring at your poop.
Oh, no, never mind. I think he's eating it.
Keep talking.
Yeah.
I think he's trying to move it into the pee pad,
so he's not like in trouble.
It's like, no, no, I think he's just trying to eat it.
Ah, gross dog.