Travolta/Cage Ep. 20 - White Man's Burden/It Could Happen To You

This week, Nathan and Clint go it alone with our latest pairing of Travolta/Cage goodness — mostly so we didn’t have to make a third person suffer the indignity of White Man’s Burden, a post-Pulp Fiction “racial commentary” in which the race/class divide is reversed and white people are on the lower rung of the totem pole. Here, John Travolta, as a poor construction worker living in the ghetto (sporting a… curious blaccent), decides to kidnap his wealthy employer (Harry Belafonte) to get money and revenge. And yup, it’s about as tone-deaf and clunky as that description implies.

Funnily enough, Cage is the steady hand this week, going full Normie for It Could Happen To You, reteaming with Honeymoon in Vegas director Andrew Bergman for a cloying but inoffensive tale of New York’s nicest cop (heh) and a down-on-her-luck waitress (played by Bridget Fonda) who both split a $4 million lottery ticket and fall in love along the way. There’s fame, there’s fortune, there’s Rosie Perez trapped in the greedy-shrew role that would take her a decade to recover from: it’s empty calories, but all in good fun!

How do these films compare? Which one moves on to whatever nebulous Round 2 we’re doing of this? Listen on and find out!

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