By Robert Scucci
| Published
September 2013 saw the unleashing of the viral YouTube video, Nicolas Cage Losing His Sh*t, and it changed the world forever. During this clip, which prominently features Clint Mansell’s Requiem for a Dream film score as our national treasure finds himself in various stages of heightened emotion, there are instances of Cage rage that I never actually saw before I finally got around to streaming 1993’s Deadfall the other night. Unlike other super-fans, I don’t look for Nicolas Cage titles with intent, but rather let them find me when the moment is right – and let me tell you, like the ferocious March breeze that’s currently pelting my windowpane, I was found, I was seen, and Nicolas Cage was heard bellowing through my apartment, shouting at shirt hangers because somebody’s trying to kill him.
Conning The Con Artist
Christopher Coppola’s Deadfall is an ambitious but poorly executed neo-noir crime drama centering on Michael Biehn’s Joe Donan, a con artist who seeks guidance from his Uncle Lou (James Coburn) after inadvertently murdering his father, Mike (also James Coburn), during a sting operation gone wrong. Thinking that he was shooting his father with a gun loaded with blanks for optics, Joe realizes, to his horror, that the dummy rounds were swapped out with live ammunition against his knowledge, and at the worst possible time.
Not knowing what else to do, Joe decides to listen to his father’s dying words, which tell him to locate a family secret that he refers to as “the cake,” which should be easy enough to track down if Uncle Lou is willing to divulge the information in the wake of his brother’s sudden death.
Realizing that he’s going to be doing more of the same con jobs in Deadfall, Joe reluctantly tags along with Nicolas Cage’s Eddie, and his girlfriend, Diane (Sarah Trigger) to get the lay of the land, collect some debts, and run a handful of low-level scams for the heck of it while Lou makes sure the big con he’s orchestrating goes off without a hitch.
Whacked Out Of His Gourd
Joe would rather maintain a low profile while figuring out his role in the elaborate con that Lou is setting up, but Eddie is a slave to his impulses, gets a sick thrill out of conning unsuspecting victims out of their money, and may be snorting and drinking just a little too much for his own good, with iconic results.
Deadfall begins to heat up when Joe becomes romantically involved with Diane, triggering a chain of events that causes Eddie, the loose cannon that he is, to melt down in the form of flopping around on the bed like a fish, screaming “I know what this is! Lou’s trying to snuff me out because of his GREASY LITTLE NEPHEW being around! Well, Vive La F*cking France, Man!”
I have no clue what point Eddie’s trying to get across during this scene in Deadfall, but I’ll be damned if I told you that it wasn’t belted out with the utmost conviction.
Not For Thriller Fans, But For Nicolas Cage Fans.
Here’s the thing about Nicolas Cage’s Eddie in Deadfall: he’s totally insane. He calls strippers “mom-ay,” carries around a deck of cards that’s all jokers, and yells “Hi-f*cking-YA!” when he gets in fights and decides karate chopping is the best way out of a sticky situation. Nothing he does makes sense in this movie.
But everything he does makes this movie worth watching.
For as by-the-boring-numbers Deadfall is as a crime thriller, Nicolas Cage’s performance is so over-the-top that I can’t help but appreciate how he made an otherwise unwatchable movie into the stuff of legend with his willingness to explore Eddie’s character in as unhinged a manner as humanly possible.
And to think, just two years after portraying Eddie in Deadfall, Nicolas Cage won an Academy Award for his performance in Leaving Las Vegas. They say practice makes perfect, and I’d like to think that Deadfall (currently streaming for free on Tubi), was one of the necessary stepping stones to put Nicolas Cage on the map that leads straight to our hearts.
