Samuel L. Jackson is one of the best actors of the modern age, and he delivers one of the best performances of his career, worthy of an Academy Award, in The Caveman's Valentine. Jackson is so powerful that he makes the audience overlook the fact that they are watching a really weird movie where the main character is a psychotic homeless man who rants about a man trying to take over the world and has winged men floating around in his head.

Yes, The Caveman's Valentine is a strange movie, and a risky one at that. Few big names are willing to go out on a limb and take the starring role of a film as a man who sees things, talks to himself, and is obviously crazier than most of the homeless people you'll see on the street, but if anyone, Jackson can pull it off. And he does.

The story itself is about the so-called Caveman who lives in Central Park, who begins to suspect an established painter of killing a man that was found dead outside his cave, although he has no evidence to back himself up. It doesn't help that he is crazy, so no one, including his own daughter, a policewoman, believes him. He takes it upon himself to solve the mystery, but here's the catch: As the audience watch the movie, the audience doesn't know whether he is fabricating everything or not. Sometimes the story suggests that he is onto something, but then something else is thrown into the loop that says he is just being paranoid. Not until the end do we learn the truth, and I must say that the end has a pretty good twist. I won't say anything more about that.

Visually, The Caveman's Valentine is quite stimulating, but at the same time the movie is a little too weird to handle. It is sometimes hard to watch Jackson act crazy, but it is also sometimes hard to watch what is going on inside his head. I am also not a big fan of characters that exist only in another character's head, although it isn't that bad here.

The Caveman's Valentine is a memorable piece of work and if anything, Samuel L. Jackson should be honored with an Oscar nomination. As far as the movie goes, the strangeness sometimes becomes overwhelming, and if it weren't Jackson at the helm, The Caveman's Valentine would probably be a lot less appealing.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.