I love when established “big movie” directors take a breather and make something small and simple. The only example that immediately comes to mind is Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath, which he made while Tom Hanks became realistically emaciated and bedraggled in between shoots for Castaway, and ultimately turned out to be the far better movie for me, but I’m sure there are others.

Aside from Hannibal, Scott’s more recent work has left me slightly cold, perhaps due to the adulation Gladiator received – I’ve never really had the time for that movie, it bored me both times I’ve seen it.

But this is far more like it. You can’t really go wrong with con artists for a film subject. David Mamet’s brilliant House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, Paul Thomas Anderson’s debut, Hard Eight (a.k.a. Sydney)… hey, even Curly Sue, the list is endless, they’re all good. It’s maybe the instructional nature of the plots, the shaky morality of the whole deal, the glee of seeing it all unravel or collapse. Matchstick Men delivers everything in this respect.

But there’s also something new here, in the form of Nicolas Cage’s obsessive-compulsive/Tourette’s/whatever performance, and a thread that’s hard to detail without giving out spoilers to do with a 14-year-old girl (played almost spookily well by 21-year-old Alison Lohman) who shows up claiming to be Cage’s daughter.

In addition, there’s Sam Rockwell being his usual entertaining self as Cage’s con partner, another fun score from Hans Zimmer to contrast his usual heavy bombastic stuff, and all the great production values you find in every Ridley Scott production. A lot of fun.

Tags: conmen, cuties

This entry was posted on Monday, February 21st, 2005 at 7:06 pm and is filed under 4 hearts, Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.