cgb vs. cinema

Don't read any further, if you have any desire to see the movie Matchstick Men. Really, I mean it.

I originally thought to try and keep any possible spoilers from this entry, but the problem with even mentioning spoilers is that this tells you from the start that there is something to spoil. And there is. Matchstick Men starts out with all the fixings of a character study, the character in this case being Nicolas Cage as Roy, an obsessive-compulsive, neurosis-laden con man.Unlike most of the trailers, which seemed themselves to obsess about Cage's verbal and physical tics, the movie (and thus Cage) does a decent job of carrying the character off.

This is where we get to the spoil, though, because it's ultimately not a character movie. I wondered early on about how the movie would eventually shake out, and about halfway through, the movie tips you off that it is in fact more plot-driven. Unfortunately, I don't think I was supposed to realize it until much later, and so I watched the second half of the movie knowing how it would play out (with the possible exception of the "one year later..." scene at the very end). There are hints, and once the movie hits its tipping point, everything falls together very quickly and obviously, and it's difficult to maintain any sort of suspension of disbelief. If you see it, you'll probably know exactly what scene I'm talking about.

Unlike The Life of David Gale, another big-name director, trick-plot movie, Matchstick Men is carried off pretty well, for all that the movie became predictable part way through. Scott is a talented director, and Cage, Sam Rockwell, and Alison Lohman (who plays Cage's daughter) manage to overcome the fact that the plot falls apart around them. There was something a little creepy about an actor in her early 20's playing a 14-year old, but then that's also explained by the plot.

So, when the focus is on the characters, it's a pretty good movie. But that movie ends about halfway through, and leads to an offering I'd probably sneak in at matinee...