Oh god. Oh my god.
Fuuuuck!
It's the normal casual conversation that we always have, but
like it'd be weird if we actually just started with
Welcome to Cage Match.
Hello and welcome to Cage Match. A roundabout way of meeting Nicolas Cage, where we take
64 Nicolas Cage movies, pick them up head to head and decide the best, cagiest, most watchable
cage movie of all time.
Yeah, we can't just start with that.
I'm Nick.
This is weird. I don't like it.
Yeah, see? Exactly. That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, it felt wrong.
Oh well, whatever. This is Cage Match. Welcome back. I'm Nick.
I'm Sean.
And I am producer Peter. This is a bonus episode.
You're welcome.
So this is just going to go out on the off week. Oh, we're going to put this. No, you have to put
this one on second. You literally just said at the end of the last episode.
We're going to do a bonus episode.
Fuck. Fine.
You did this to yourself, Peter.
Yeah, I mean, I can change the editing.
We have the power.
I can just leave that part out.
That'd be wild. Peter editing himself out.
Ooh, yeah. I always put myself in more.
Yeah, you're just at home recording like on your phone.
Oh man.
It's weird when he records him when he records our jokes and then dubs himself in telling our jokes.
I do it better. I have better delivery.
This is a bonus episode. Nick and I this last week had watched the old way,
Nicholas Cage's newest film in his first Western.
We've watched it twice. I enjoyed it a lot more the second time when I wasn't.
Oh, yeah, he had a lot of sandwiches. Nick, why don't you break this one down for us real quick?
It's like Shane, if the kid were cooler.
All right. There you have it.
I think that's actually pretty succinct.
What if someone hasn't seen Shane?
Go see Shane for context and everything I'm about to say about this movie.
We'll be back in 90 minutes.
Yeah.
So why don't you give them a slightly less succinct overview of what this movie's about.
So Nicholas Cage plays Colton Briggs, who is like a head hunter or like a bounty hunter in
old Western times, specifically. Was it Wyoming?
Yeah.
Yeah. So he's like the baddest gun out there.
The movie starts off with his killer mustache. Like this thing looks so good.
I like how they try and de-age Nick Cage by giving him this big bushy mustache to cover his face.
That only makes him look older.
Yeah. It's only there to like hide those really deep nasal labial folds of his.
Good use of the lingo.
Yeah.
But all it does is point directly to his turquoise.
Always say nasal labial folds if I'm going to refer to that area,
because it's just the nasal labial folds.
It sounds like labia.
Yeah. It's hilarious.
Genitals. Hey, man, I'm an equal opportunity genital conversationalist.
So yes, Nick Cage is the baddest bounty hunter in the old west.
Yeah. So he and his mustache bring in this guy who's going to get hung. So Sean and I normally
don't watch these movies together, but I got to like pepper him with commentary while watching it.
And vice versa.
Yeah. Although you didn't talk too much. You were real full.
So when they go to hang this dude, the intent was to hang him from the mercantile sign off
of this shop. And it's just a sign that's like cantilevered out. It's like a two by six.
It's like that is not how you hang a dude. Wild Westerners.
But they go ahead and they like, you know, hang him. And then the guy series of events dies.
Fast forward in time.
OK, so outlaws try and like get their buddy out of out of trouble.
His son's there. Nick Cage, you know, shoots out all the bad guys.
Yep. The lawman who Nick Cage brought him into gets gut shot.
So Nick Cage, like 100 percent pay off the dude. And as he's going, the guy who was getting
hanged goes to shoot a cage. The man who brought him in, Nick Cage just turns around, shoots him
close up on the face 20 years later. So at this point, Nick Cage would be.
I mean, we don't know. People just looked older back then because life was harder.
He was a hard 16, maybe 28 in the beginning. And now he's like 48 and a total square.
Does he have the mustache? No, no way.
And he's wearing like a Wild West suit that doesn't look like it's tailored well.
It does not fit.
Why don't they have a proper tailor in the Wild West?
But he's he's happily married.
They have giant mechanical spiders in the Wild West. Why can't they have proper tailors?
No, that's the wild Wild West. Oh.
But he's happily married because, you know, because his wife's hanging their white linens.
And they've got a daughter that he doesn't quite get on with.
He does not get on with humans well. It's kind of established later in the movie,
like he just doesn't emote. He has no emotional connection to people or things and stuff.
His wife's like, you know, you have to walk your daughter to school.
Your dad is going to walk you to school. And they're both like, but why?
And they start walking and we get like jaunty music, which is really setting us up for like
a father daughter comedy, which this movie kind of just is.
Yes. It's a father daughter comedy with vengeance and shooting.
We go through this prolonged scene of them like kind of sniping back and forth at each other
and just arguing about how things should be done.
He owns the mercantile store in this new town they're living in.
Yeah, not very creative. Like the last job he did, the owner of the mercantile store was there.
And now he's the mercantile store. Good content.
He gets a customer comes in who tells him this really prolonged story.
Oh, man, about shit apples, about shit apples.
And this gets to my biggest elaborate.
Well, this guy comes in and he's all like, well, every year my mama makes a pie for the church
bake sale or potluck or whatever.
Would you know she got her apples from old Mr. Johnson.
Like that tree grew right next to the outhouse.
And I tell you, I think the shit from the outhouse got down into the roots and made
the apples taste like shit.
And once you know it, the pie tasted like shit.
So this year she doesn't want to do a pie.
She's going to bake a cake.
And meanwhile, it keeps cutting back to Nicolas Cage.
Like it's just like face and face.
Yeah, Sean insists that they were never in the same.
Nick Cage is on set for maybe seven days because every scene with him is just cuts to him
reacting intently to things.
But it's just the way like he hates having to interact with other people.
Like his character just hates socializing with people.
He has no social empathy, but he just like gets angrier and angrier every time they cut
back to him throughout this story.
Like he's just pissed that anybody would talk to him instead of just tell him what they want.
So he like gets to the end of this guy's story and Cage is just like angry and he's sitting
there and he's just like, is there something you wanted?
And the guy's like, oh, some flour.
The only last sounds like it sucked.
It was clean, though, according to this film.
Except for that one guy.
Not this guy.
There's another guy later who's dirty.
Well, this guy was dirty, too.
This guy was.
He was filthy.
That's the whole.
So like when Nick Cage goes to like get the.
This is the kind of Peter loves the most.
Yeah, we're getting the deep cuts here.
You asked us to elaborate.
I did.
I brought this on.
So when Cage goes to like get the bag of flour, this dirty man who tells us the story
about the shit apples goes to steal like a handful of jelly beans from the jar that's on the
counter.
But Cage's daughter wasn't able to go to school because the teacher was sick.
Has a box.
Yeah.
Probably die.
Yeah, that's what the kid suspects.
And so like the kids just watching him steal these and the guy notices and he like takes
the jelly beans back out of his pocket and puts them back in the jar.
I wasn't I wasn't really going to steal them.
That was just a fun game.
Me and your daddy play.
So yeah, back at the homestead, some strangers show up while wife is putting up the laundry
to dry and they kind of like are creeps.
There's a guy there who does his best Tom Hardy impression.
He really tries hard and Clint Howard's there, but not hardy enough.
Yeah.
And Clint Howard is there as Eustace.
And that is by far one of the top three characters in this movie following only Nick Cage and
daughter.
What about the Marshall?
You know, the exposition machine.
Oh, yeah.
The Marshall just drinking.
Your father sure was a piece of shit.
Sorry for my language, but he was a terrible human being.
So these guys show up and they're creeps.
They kind of like they're in and around the house like Eustace is inside the house.
She kicks him in the balls.
He's like, oh, you get me the balls.
It was great.
And then they kill her in the garage.
Sorry, it's a barn.
The horse garage.
Yeah, the horse garage.
So when Nick Cage and daughter show up at the end of the day, there's just a bunch of
Marshalls there that were eating their food, hanging out.
Yeah.
Eating all of Nick Cage's food and like making themselves at home in the house.
This is actually a Fourth Amendment violation.
Soldiers aren't supposed to do that.
Know your constitution at least as well as me to like questioningly say, quote,
amendments. Good thing Michael doesn't listen to this thing.
Fuck.
He said he's going to wait till we're done with the first season, then just mainline it all.
So I've got months until he hears that.
Yeah.
Cool.
He'll catch you up, though.
Yeah, you will.
Thanks for listening, Michael.
Sure.
Rate and subscribe, Michael.
Also join our Patreon.
Yeah, we're going to backcharge you, too.
So the Marshalls don't have to be in the house.
Tell them that these people killed his wife.
And so Colton's just like, ah, shit.
The Marshalls sitting there getting drunk and telling the daughter,
like what a terrible person her daddy used to be.
And now he like just used to kill tons of people and this and that.
And there's like a whole character thing for the daughter where she's like, oh, is
daddy going to like what's going to stop him from killing people now,
now that mom's not here to rein him in?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And so like the Marshall leaves, the daughter goes to bed.
And like when Nick Cage pulls all of his guns and stuff out and he's like,
you're going to go get revenge.
I guess he decides he's not going to be a single dad.
So he goes upstairs and the daughter just like calmly wakes up while he's standing there
at like the ladder to her loft.
With a gun pointed at her.
Yeah, just pointing a revolver at her.
And she just stares at him and says something along the lines of like,
Mama wouldn't like you pointing that at me.
Yeah.
And so he decides, I guess that's true.
He takes the daughter and they go get on a horse and start riding off to get revenge.
And then they chase down outlaws.
There's ambushes.
This movie doesn't know what it wants to be.
It either wants to be like a feel good father daughter,
like coming to like them working their way out or it's a revenge story.
And usually it's neither.
I really liked it.
I enjoyed it a lot on my second viewing.
It's I like it on my first view.
Again, I was really full.
I'm a visual person.
You're very full.
Very full.
OK, I'm a visual person.
Like the first scene of this is that shot of the mercantile sign that is brand new white.
Like nothing in the Old West is dirty except for like two characters.
The fact that also at night everyone's just lit from the same side,
even if they're facing each other is really weird.
Yeah, that was great.
So it's just there's a lot of decisions made.
I looked up the director a little bit.
I love that his name is Brett Donahue.
Yeah, yeah, Donahue.
And he did Bruce Willis's last film.
But so there's this whole like relationship with the daughter of
clearly they both have some anti-social that in and of itself
could make an interesting movie set in the Old West.
It is not something we're ever going to return to except for one amazing scene,
which do you want to describe this one amazing scene, Nick?
Yeah, sure.
The marshals got ambushed by the outlaws and there was one guy who was going to go back to town
to get help for the people who were shot and stuff.
And Nick Cage and daughter are there and they see this horse coming and they're like,
well, we need a second horse because we'll never catch up with just one horse.
So we're going to set an ambush where the daughter is going to distract him and Nick Cage will take
the horse.
So she was like, well, what am I going to do?
He's like, I don't know, cry or something.
And they established she doesn't know how to cry.
And so Nick's like, well, just think about that time where such and such lady lost her baby.
And she was crying, like looking for her kid.
And he's just like, where, where my baby, my baby, where, where.
And so the daughter just takes that as a literal interpretation of how people cry.
So this guy comes riding up on a horse and there's this kid,
like this little girl in like pants and western hat and stuff,
just standing in the middle of a road, just staring at him going where, where, where my baby,
my baby, where.
And the guy's like, a baby?
And it's like, what?
It is an astounding sequence.
Yeah, it's great.
But then later when they catch up with the marshals and she's talking to them,
there's one marshal that got shot like in the leg and he won't give up his gun.
Nick Cage distracts him or something.
And the daughter just like steps on the gunshot wound in his leg.
And so the guy like gives up the shotgun and he's sitting there crying.
And she's staring at him and she's like, he does that much better.
I'm going to take that performance next.
So it's like, oh, God, you're a psychopath.
Yeah. And that's kind of the end of that story, that arc of that story.
Yeah. Oh, did she get to use the crying again?
No.
I felt like she did cry later, but.
Well, she well, she actually does cry when her father dies.
Oh, yeah, that's true.
Spoiler.
It's a Western.
Yeah.
And I said it was very Shane like, but better.
So, yeah, the criminals, they broke out of jail and the lead guy who is the kid that
Nick that Colton shot at the beginning of the film's father.
So he's out for revenge.
He promised all of them mucho dinero.
So when they get to where the money is, it actually just it's a bunch of pesos.
Right.
Because they're going to jump the border and the pesos will be worth something.
But American dollars wouldn't or whatever.
Like, you know, he promised them, you know, a fortune, but it just it isn't any good here.
So they have to stick with him to Mexico.
Yeah, it is smart.
And then later there's this whole thing where he's going to like rip them off by like
wrapping strips of newspaper in it.
That doesn't go anywhere either.
Nothing in this movie goes anywhere is what I'm saying.
Eventually, we get the showdown.
Yeah.
Every attempt at like Tom Foolery gets foiled.
Yeah.
Again, Clint Howard is kind of the best part of this film.
Clint Howard is.
And no one's ever said that about Clint Howard before.
I mean, I didn't know who he was until we were watching this movie.
So I definitely hadn't said it.
But now now I have.
I mean, he does look like a crazed version of Ron Howard.
It's like if you left Ron Howard out in the sun too long.
But then put him in like a Confederate like war outfit and you've got him in this movie.
It's like if you put a Richie Cunningham action figure in the microwave.
Yeah, that joke's great for boomers.
Our target audience.
I don't know who our target audience is.
Apparently, it's just our friends.
Yes.
But we do get we do get one decent gunfight.
Yeah, no boat chases, but.
But yeah, Colton gets the shot in the arm.
And at the final showdown, they've kidnapped his daughter.
And the final showdown, Colton can either shoot the guy who killed his wife or shoot
Hustas and save his daughter.
So he shoots Hustas.
Bad guy shoots Colton.
Then daughter shoots bad guy.
Then the exposition machine of the marshal shows up again,
explains how he could take her in, but would only wind up looking the fool.
If you know, everything that came out about him and his crew came out.
So he's going to let the daughter go back home.
Yeah, where there's nothing for her.
Yeah.
Like even their house is burned down.
She has only the pants she's wearing and the horse and her dad's saddle.
That's it.
Oh, there's one other great scene in this because she goes into town
to kind of see where the bad guys are.
But the whole plan is she's going to just ride in town,
say she's picking up something from the mercantile store from
for her parents who live in a little farmstead.
And she gets into the store and gets distracted for a second.
And when the store owner is like, can I help you?
She just verbatim does the my mama was going to make a pie
like speech from the movie and the shit apples.
And the guy's like, who's Mr Johnson?
Because they're not in Mexico yet, but everyone in this town is Mexican.
Oh, I thought you were doing like an Indian accent
because he ran a mercantile like an old west 711.
No, I'm not.
I'm not that racist.
Although it doesn't bother me that they're still in America
and everything in this town in Santa Rosa where they're in the town of Santa Rosa.
But everything is like, you know, everything's in English except for the Zapata.
If you want a sombrero, you go to Zapata Ria.
If you want to be a shoe store.
Not where I'm from.
Zapata means you look, you take your fucking melanin and.
I don't know, like put it in a shadow box and cherish it for all I care.
I'm sorry.
I don't know Spanish well.
That's I don't either.
I know. I know. Zapata the up here.
Yeah. Yeah. So this movie is definitely it's it's a laugh.
I wouldn't say don't watch it.
No, definitely watch it.
It's a great fucking movie.
It's a lot of fun.
Don't pay twenty five dollars for it.
How many Clint Howards out of 10 do you rank it?
Nine and a half. Clint Howard's out of 10.
Pretty good.
Which half?
Bottom.
The non-talky half.
The part that got kicked earlier.
Nine Clint Howards and one Clint Howard's genitalia.
He was the comedic relief of the bad guys.
Yeah, he was like he was the
goofy one that you just didn't feel bad rooting for in the bad guy gang.
Yeah, if it goes to streaming, watch it.
Yeah, right now it's on Apple TV and.
It's $19 to rent.
So, you know, make your own decisions about that.
Thank you all for listening to this bonus episode.
If you are interested in rating, reviewing or subscribing, it helps us out a lot.
We are available to heckle on Reddit at Cage Match Pod.
And if you are interested in being a patron, you can support us on Patreon.com slash Cage Match.
Well, anything else to say on it?
Wham, wham, my baby, my baby.
That's that's about it.
There's one at one point in the film, Clint Howard just goes,
I'm out of here and like walks, walks off stage left.
And I'm like, I hope he just like I hope that was him quitting the movie.
Just his last scene.
Yeah, I'm out of here.