There's hardly a more polarizing figure in Hollywood than Nicolas Cage. Those who love him, tend to love him a lot. And those who hate him, well...you get the point.
Recently, Cage's film Jiu Jitsu which was released just last year began streaming on Netflix. As in keeping with the essence of the actor, fans can't seem to make heads or tails of the movie, and as a result — the Netflix community is divided.
In the late '80s and throughout the '90s, Nicolas Cage was one of the most acclaimed and sought-after leading men in Hollywood.
He received his first Golden Globe nomination in 1988 for Moonstruck and took home the Oscar for "Best Actor" in 1995 for his role in Leaving Las Vegas.
Other films like The Rock and Raising Arizona have an incredible cult following. And for my money, Face/Off is one of the defining action films of the '90s.
Those who decry the name Nicolas Cage don't suffer in silence. They argue that for every 'good movie' that the actor has made over the course of his career, there are about five times as many bad ones.
When you examine films like The Wickerman, Color Out of Space, and Mandy — it becomes a difficult claim to outright refute. And Nic's predilection for strange and questionable movie roles only seems to be getting worse with age.
Nic plays an ancient jiu-jitsu warrior named Wylie, who's tasked with helping a group of chosen jiu-jitsu masters battle against the threat of an alien invasion. Oh, and I forgot to mention — this battle happens every six years.
Starring alongside Nic is action-star Frank Grillo, as well as the martial-arts legend Tony Jaa — whom many will likely remember from the Ong Bak film franchise.
Jiu Jitsu couldn't even manage to crack a 30% score on the Tomatometer. Likewise, it was barely able to register a 2.9/10 on IMDb.
Yet somehow, the film has already managed to fill the #4 slot on the Netflix Top 10 Films List and is currently sitting at #5 in the overall Top 10 — which includes TV shows as well as movies.
I'm not going to lie: when I hear a film described as being a melding of Mortal Kombat and Predator — my mouth begins to salivate.
Surely anything that can combine even the most pedestrian elements of these two iconic films can't be all bad — can it? Yet still, this Twitter user found it necessary to go so far as to capitalize the word "AWFUL."
I can count on one hand the number of movies I've turned-off before finishing, so reading this Tweet is a damning indictment if ever there was one.
But on some sick and twisted level, the fact that Jiu Jitsu is a 'bad movie' is precisely what seems to be drawing audiences to it. This raises a very important and thought-provoking question that's been debated amongst moviegoers for generations...
Can a film that is so hilariously unfunny become a comedy classic? Can an action-movie be so disproportionately over-the-top that it becomes a staple of the genre?
In the end, the answer to the question "is Nic Cage a great actor?" is a lot like "Shroedinger's cat" — both yes and no. Perhaps we're supposed to view him as an enigma, a paradox; a walking contradiction who defies all rational explanation.
And maybe, if we keep an open mind, Jiu Jitsu just might be the best/worst movie any of us have ever seen.
