If I would've watched only one of the two movies, either "Pig" or "Nobody", probably I wouldn't have written anything. By chance though, I've seen them both recently, and I think this context deserves a blog entry.
"Pig" starts as a low budget John Wick. Some guy (Nicolas Cage) lives like a hermit deep in the forest, with his truffle pig, his only contact with the outside world being the distributor who sells the mushrooms. All nice and well until one night when two thieves beat him up and steal the animal. From here on, it looks like what you would expect - the payback - the guy wants his pig back. What you would not expect is how this moves on. I didn't see the trailer before the movie, and I think it tells too much already. "Pig" deserves watching mostly for the surprise you'll get, delivered piece by piece. It starts with some minor details about the guy in the woods: a name that still seems to open doors in the city he had left 15 years back, a beating taken in the some sort of an "underground fight club" in the basement of a former hotel just to receive a clue for his search, after which at some point his former job comes up, moving further on with a confrontation with an "underboss" and finally "the showdown" with "the big boss". It looks like a typical template for a revenge story :) Well, it's not.. We don't get guns and explosions, what we have here is.. knives and forks. And I won't say more.
"Nobody" is a John Wick, or better said a retired John Wick (Bob Odenkirk), working a management job in a company owned by his father-in-law, and living a monotonous life. All nice and well though until one night when two thieves break his home, steal his change from the living room and his wristwatch, give a black eye to his son, and leave our guy being asked by cops, relatives and his kid why he didn't use his golf cross. From here on is what you would expect - the payback - but this ends quickly. So quickly that being already in the kick-ass mood, "the nobody" breaks the bones of a five member gang harassing a lone girl in a bus. One of them, unfortunately, being the brother of the local Russian mafia kingpin. Obviously, now the bad guy wants revenge. And now, we're getting here too some details about our "nobody": again somebody who's identity is blurry but freaks everybody out, again somebody who retired a long ago, having his basement secured as a nuclear bunker that not even his kids seem to know about, and again at some point we're given more info on his former job, and we move further on to fighting the Russian army an finally "the big boss". From its half onward the movie gets very similar to John Wick (first), which can be explained by having the same screenwriter who didn't even bother to use, I don't know.. yakuza, or some other mob organization as bad guys (it's probably more politically correct to be the Russians lately in this position). What else to say... Obviously we have lots of guns and explosions. Practically, the only original part of the movie is the main character - who indeed at a first sight is in a total contract with the classic image of an action hero.
"Pig" is a movie that's a bit too pretentious for what's left in the end, and there are parts where it's a bit exaggerated, but it gets as much as possible from a surprise character, and not a "surprise" like a former secret agent/assassin/etc who, wow, we find out what army skills possesses. Objectively, that's the impression I was left with after my initial view. Which, unfortunately was before "Nobody". Because if it would have been after, probably I would have seen it more positively in the above comparison. It's too much to say that "Pig" is a "thriller" as IMDB labels it, but that completes well the subliminal irony towards the typical action movie. We don't have any gratuitous violence in "Pig", where we could draw statistics on shot bullets vs. "Rambo III". Such as we could do for "Nobody", which even if it tries in its first part to make fun of some cliches, finally it ends up with the ususal liniar development of the genre, where bad guys are taken out one by one until the last who obviously needs the "boss fight". For its first part that seems promising, it's probably acceptable as an average popcorn movie, but that's all of it. So, "Pig" wins :)
Rating:
Pig - 3.5 out of 5
Nobody - 2.5 out of 5
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