Even the most ardent of Nicolas Cage fans would struggle to keep up to date with all of his movies, as the prolific actor’s descent into bargain basement mediocrity has seen him star in a whopping 37 films in the last seven years alone, the overwhelming majority of which have been passable at best and absolutely awful at worst.
Every now and again, though, a performance will slip through the cracks that reminds you why the Academy Award winner is named by many of his contemporaries as the finest actor of his generation, although it seems to be happening on a less frequent basis than ever, with his last truly memorable turn coming over a dozen movies ago in 2018’s Mandy.
The most exciting project he has on the horizon is undoubtedly The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which sees Cage playing a fictionalized version of himself in what could well be the craziest outing of his entire career, but fans who want to check out one of his better performances from the last decade are in luck because forgotten thriller The Frozen Ground has just arrived on Netflix.
The 2013 crime story sees Nicolas Cage appear alongside fellow slumming star and VOD stalwart John Cusack, and while the plot isn’t exactly anything to write home about, the Face/Off and Con Air action icon elevates the material with some genuinely committed work that outstrips such familiar and generic surroundings. It isn’t one of his greatest movies by any means, but for subscribers looking for a solid genre thriller that will pass a couple of hours, The Frozen Ground is well worth checking out now that it’s available on the streaming service.
