The unbearable weight of The A.V. Club’s favorite Nicolas Cage performances

Cage was only 22 years old—22, people—while filming inarguably his greatest role to date: that of one H.I. “Hi” McDunnough, the first indelible character (okay, some completists may argue for M. Emmet Walsh’s Loren Visser in Blood Simple) in the ’ long line of indelible characters. In their sophomore effort—a decidedly comedic, zany, energized, quotable about-face from Simple—Cage carries the movie as an ex-con thief who, to become a straight-laced family man, steals a baby from a wealthy couple with “more than they could handle.” The actor supposedly butted heads with the Coens by suggesting changes to the character, but none of that friction shows on the screen: Whether he’s getting the shit kicked out of him by a biker, telling his boss to “Keep your goddamn hands off my wife,” laughing dumbly with a particularly dumb pair of brothers, or quietly tip-toeing through a brightly colored nursery, he gives a knockout comedic performance. [Tim Lowery]

Panos Cosmatos’ isn’t your average acting vehicle—but that’s precisely what makes tortured hero Red Miller my favorite Nicolas Cage performance to date. In this rock-opera-meets-slasher flick, Cage plays a reclusive logger living an idyllic life in the wilderness with his artist girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). That is, until a mysterious cult decides to kidnap and kill the titular character in a ritual sacrifice carried out with the help of an LSD-addicted biker gang. What follows Red’s devastation in act one is a super trippy, ultra-violent revenge epic, the blooming intensity of which is better likened to an experimental art installation than a traditional scary movie. Yet, despite Mandy’s overwhelming visuals and unrelenting, heavy-metal score, Cage delivers a jack-of-all-trades performance that’s captivating at every volume. An immortal action hero wielding an ax one minute and an emotional man of multitudes pondering the depths of grief the next, Cage channels his most subtle and extreme acting talents into one hyper-compelling character. Searingly sincere and unwaveringly badass—with every hallucinatory fantasy reflected in his magnetic eyes—Mandy’s leading man is Nic Cage concentrate in the best way. [Alison Foreman]

Nic Cage wasn’t the internet meme he is today when I was growing up. I mostly remember him from light comedies like It Can Happen To You and grownup movies like his Oscar-winning Leaving Las Vegas, which frankly I wasn’t interested in. But around 1995, he began his tenure of leading action films, like The Rock, Con-Air, and, finally, . Outside of Last Action Hero and other meta-action comedies, Face/Off—featuring John Travolta and Cage’s impressions of each other—might be the first time I registered an actor acknowledging the expectations that their star-power brings to a role. Cage goes huge in the first half hour of the movie as Castor Troy, with his golden glocks and hours of peach eating. But for as gross as his Castor is, he’s really quite sweet inhabiting Travolta’s character Sean Archer, which must’ve been a joyous acting exercise for him. Probably almost as enjoyable as it was for me, baptized into the church of Cage via Face/Off. As a proud churchgoer, I still kneel at the altar of John Woo’s masterpiece. [Matt Schimkowitz]

In hindsight, it feels strange that it took so long for Nicolas Cage and Werner Herzog to make a movie together. The man who steered a loose cannon like Klaus Kinski to his finest performances seems like a natural pairing for Cage’s unpredictability, and backs that suspicion up. The film fuses the actor’s two strong suits—earthy naturalism and larger-than-life rampaging id—into a potent story of a cop battling his demons both personal and professional. Connected to Abel Ferrera’s original in name only, the film stars Cage as Terence McDonagh, and over the course of a murder investigation and struggle with substance abuse, his lumbering lieutenant comes across almost like the Universal Studios monsters of old, a misunderstood beast raging against the rejection of his good intentions. It’s a volcanic performance, and, like so much of Cage’s best work, elevates his man into the realm of myth. [Alex McLevy]

Nicolas Cage has proven over the course of his long career that he can conquer pretty much any genre, and win an Oscar to boot. But for straight-up enjoyment, I’ll head for his screwball performance as commitmentphobe Jack Singer in 1992’s Honeymoon In Vegas. The plot makes little sense as a kind of sexist Indecent Proposal comedy, a few years before that movie even came out, as Cage somehow loses a massive bet in a poker game to gambler Tommy (James Caan), and has to offer Tommy his girlfriend Betsy (Sarah Jessica Parker) for the weekend to get out of it. But Cage’s increasing apoplexy as he chases Tommy and Betsy across Hawaii and elsewhere is cartoonish in the best Yosemite Sam manner, until you’re surprised steam doesn’t actually come out of Cage’s ears. It all culminates with Jack jumping out of a plane in Vegas with a group of skydiving Elvis impersonators, because of course it does. It’s Nicolas Cage, after all.