At RogerEbert.com, Scout Tafoya writes on the inimitable Nicolas Cage. “There are some actors we watch because we want to see the result of months of internal calculus as they’ve wedged themselves into a new shape; a new person that could only have resulted from this actor taking this assignment. There are some actors we watch because they find stores of undeniable emotion in each character, no matter how small or vile; they will get us to understand that which we might never otherwise. There are some actors we watch because they’ll make a meal out of every performance; tics and affectations stacked like a closet full of board games. We watch Nicolas Cage for all of these reasons and more. We watch Nicolas Cage because there is no one else who does what he does. He can vanish into a character; he can make a character vanish into him. We watch Nicolas Cage to see an animal force unleashed upon lives, to see what form its highly unstable energy takes, to see the demons in him leap out of darkness and into each body he possesses.”