BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — After playing, among other characters, a one-eyed dad who drinks beer out of his enemy’s skull (“Drive Angry”) and a motorcyclist from hell who can make his head burst into flame (“Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”), Nicolas Cage had gotten a reputation as a guy whose love of action pictures had, over the last decade, pulled him away from what he does best, namely, act. Quirky comedies and thoughtful indies were set aside for films heavy on bloodletting and explosions. Critics, even longtime champions like Roger Ebert, yearned for the Nic of old.

So it’s worth noting that when Mr. Cage went looking for his next screen role in 2012, he wanted something a bit more understated.

He took off much of that year looking for just the right part. “I’d done more baroque things, more operatic things,” he said. “What I’d call Western Kabuki in some ways, where I was trying to be more stylistic. All I knew is that I wanted to explore a quietude and not have to act, but just feel, or be.” For Mr. Cage, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of a screenwriter who commits suicide by ingesting lethal amounts of booze (“Leaving Las Vegas” in 1995), quiet can be a relative term. What he found was “Joe,” based on a Larry Brown novel. Mr. Cage plays the title character, a hard-living woodsman who illegally poisons trees for a living. Joe has a quick temper that he struggles mightily to keep in check, but when he happens upon two very depraved individuals, things quickly go south. The movie is quiet in the way that “Red Rock West” (1993), another film starring Mr. Cage as a salt-of-the-earth Texan with a propensity for violence, was quiet. In other words, not very.

“Joe” marks a return to form for this actor, a straight drama after a run of genre and effects-heavy action movies. Early reviews have singled out Mr. Cage for praise. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter noted his “bone-deep characterization of a man at war with himself.”