Just saw the movie. Have a theory...

Perhaps Nick should've returned to doing more of those off-beat roles. I'm talking about doing the occasional blockbuster instead of striving for the No. 1 or No. 2 action-adventure slot. That's a hard slot to stay at unless you've got the looks in addition to the acting gusto. I'm thinking Bruce Willis, Pierce Brosnan, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Daniel Craig, etc. Those tough guys have the kinds of faces that remain hard, no matter how much they age. Hell, I was willing to keep watching Sean Connery swing ropes from one hazard to another if he hadn't retired. But the difference between Nicholas Cage and all those actors I mentioned is that, with the exception of perhaps Brosnan, they can't pull off the hipness that Cage did in his early films.

As always, I tend to get off-topic, so please forgive me, here. ... Bruce Willis tried to go the hip route early in his career. After all, he personified ultra-hipness in the '80s hit series "Moonlighting." He and co-star Cybill Shepherd lighted up the small screen as stylin' private eyes of Blue Moon Investigations agency: the irrespressible "David Addison" and the sassy "'Maddie' Hayes." The consummation of their sizzling pairing, which happened later in the series, was one of the most-watched prime-time episodes of the 1980s. And Al Jarreau's singing the theme song -- a breezy, jazzy number -- made the anticipation of the opening credits absolutely scintillating. (The "Moonlighting" theme song became a hit, just as Mike Post's theme song to the precinct-focused police drama "Hill Street Blues" had been at the beginning of that awesome decade.)

For those of you IMDb users who are too young to recall the beginning of Bruce Willis' career, his role in "Moonlighting" made him a household name, and it wasn't long before his movie career was launched. This was the 1980s. The late 1960s and all of the 1970s had brought sexy to the forefront with full-frontal nudity, but the 1980s brought sexy back in a classy, haute couture mode -- think "DRESSED TO KILL" and "AMERICAN GIGOLO," two films that were released in 1980, as well as "9 1/ WEEKS," "FLASHDANCE," "DIRTY DANCING," "VAMPIRE'S KISS" and "BATMAN"." On the small screen, how can we forget "Miami Vice," "Remington Steele" (yup -- that was Pierce Brosnan in the role of a fictitious-within-fiction character) and "Dynasty"?"

For all the sexual frankness that was de rigueur on the big screen by the mid-1980s, it was still controversial in "Moonlighting" to see the consummation of attraction between "David" and "Maddie." The sudden transition was complete with a cleared-away coffeetable and the cymbals-clashing, heart-thumping beat of The Ronettes' "Be My Baby." In fact, whenever I view NBC-TV's "Chuck," and I watch the sexy banter and body language between the title character and his co-spy, "Sarah," I think of Willis and Shepherd as "David" and "Maddie." Ironically, after "David" and "Maddie" did the chicken wing, the "Moonlighting" began losing its popularity; although, the other reasons, besides loss of sexual tension, could've been Shepherd's real-life growing family (she conceived twins, not from Willis, of course) and Willis' attention to filming DIE HARD.