Silent Cage

At this point in his career, I figured filmmakers had already done everything with Nicolas Cage that they could possibly do with Nicolas Cage.

Then I saw Willy's Wonderland.

On the surface, it is among the least surprising uses of Cage. It's about a badass loaner who has to fight a bunch of singing animatronic characters from a children's theme restaurant. It's dripping with grunge and the exploitation quality that has characterized the best uses of Cage in recent years (such as Mandy). 

But within that there's a small detail that stands out, and though this may qualify as a minor spoiler, it's worth telling you if it gets you to overcome your valid wary preconceptions and watch Willy's Wonderland:

He never says a single word.

That's right, director Kevin Lewis willfully deprives Cage of one of his main cinematic tools, one of the main reasons people want to cast him in the first place: his voice.

Cinema is first and foremost a visual tool, and Lewis understands that -- he's got deceptively strong abilities with editing and with arrangement of characters within a shot. If the movie looks "terrible" sometimes, that's by design. It's supposed to look like a piece of dirty grindhouse garbage. 

Part of his visual instinct is the understanding that a character like "The Janitor" -- that's the only way Cage's character is known, conscripted into cleaning up the titular restaurant after he doesn't have the cash to pay for four flat tires on his car -- needn't be verbal to make an impression. In fact, Cage has got the presence to make plenty of an impression, and can communicate everything that needs to be communicated through nods and discomfiting stares. 

And surely it's also a gimmick. Lewis is smart enough to know that Nicolas Cage not talking for the entire movie is a selling point in and of itself. I mean, I'm hoping I can sell you on it here. 

Cage does come close to speaking on occasion -- he does verbalize sometimes, as when he is letting out cries of rage and exertion while beating to death one particularly stubborn animatronic monster. But no words actually emanate from him. 

It's possible there would be an exception somewhere in his career, but more than likely this is Cage's first ever wordless performance. "Crazy Cage" -- that quality that has made him a top name for a project like Willy's Wonderland -- often requires the ranting and raving of a man going off his rocker. 

However, Kevin Lewis realizes you can also get "Crazy Cage" just by having him repeatedly whale on demented animatronics until the black oil that serves as their blood is spattered all over his face and clothes.

Willy's Wonderland is no Mandy. Don't take this recommendation as more than it is. 

It's a movie worth seeing, though, for more than just the novelty of Cage never speaking. It's not the first time a movie has tried to make children's characters sinister -- in fact, it's probably not the 100th time -- but I don't specifically remember a movie set in a ghoulish Chuck E. Cheese's, so it's got that going for it as well.