Os Vigaristas

Reviewing a movie like Matchstick Men is tough because it's a con movie and as such I really can't go into the plot all that much. So, I'll just give a quick little synopsis of the plot, but really if you've seen any trailers for the movie, you know the plot pretty well.

Nicolas Cage plays Roy, a con man (or, as he likes to say, a Con Artist!) who has a lot of problems. For one, he's a compulsive cleaner, he hates the outdoors and he has lot of ticks Roy needs medication to keep him sane.

One day he knocks his pills into the sink and when he calls his doctor to get more he finds out that his doctor is no longer in town! This provides one of the funnier/saddest part of the movie. I'm not sure if it was suppose to be played up for laughs or not, the tone was kind of hard to tell, but Roy spend the next day and a half cleaning his house, his ticks got worst and well it made me feel kind of bad for him.

His partner Frank, played by Sam Rockwell provides him with the number for another psychologist who can help. Roy goes to the psychologist thinking that it'll be easy, to just ask for the pills and he'll get them. No, this guy wants to help Roy and will not give him any pills until he talks. Which, I must say, shows two things. One, Nick Cage is great when he plays these type of rolls, and two, he's damn funny. What he tells the psychologist was both funny and sad. During that time though it's reviled that Roy was married at one time, and when his wife left she was pregnant and he doesn't know what happen to the child who would be 14 by now.

After getting the pills (only a weeks worth mind you) Roy decides to find out about his daughter, but he can't because he's too scared, so after getting the number of his ex wife he asks his psychologist to make the call when he can. Later that night he gets a call from him and finds out that he has a daughter who wants to meet him.

That's as far as I'll go with the plot because the movie really picks up from there as he bonds with his new daughter and sets up a really complex and dangerous con.

Like I said, Nick Cage is great in the movie, but I also want to point out that his daughter, Angela (played by Alison Lohman) was just fantastic to watch. She really lit up the screen when she smiled and it looked like Alison Lohman was just having a ball playing her. She was your typical 14 year old (only, and this shocked me when I found out, Alison Lohman is 24 years old! If you watch it, keep that in mind and tell me she doesn't look like a 14 year old.) who knew just how to work her dad! Some of the funnier moments came after he would yell at her, then she'd start to cry and Roy would just completely collapse and start apologizing for what he said, even if he was completely right! It was just really funny.

Matchstick Men isn't a fast paced movie, it's more of a character study between Roy and Angela and how she changes his life and makes him reprioritizes his values and the way he runs his life.

After recently having the pleasure(?) of viewing one of Cage's latest offerings - 'Bangkok Dangerous', - I approached this one with a sense of confidence, as it already has such a great reputation. Ridley Scott - the renowned director of Bladerunner - has made a film of quite a different genre, so a real departure from his usual stuff, but I have to say he has come in with what I felt to be a very watchable film with some pretty complex characters thrown in. Nic Cage gets to display a good range of his acting skills. He really is the master of the facial tic as anyone thinking back to some of his earlier films (such as Vampyr's Kiss') will recall. To those who scoff at his recent choice of projects e.g. G-Force, just remember, he is an actor. You take the work while you can. Anyway, to summarise, for me, above all, this film was refreshing as all of the actors acquitted themselves really well. A polished piece of cinematography that I will definitely enjoy viewing again.

Matchstick Men tells the story of con artist Roy Waller (Nicolas Cage) and his protégé Frank Mercer (Sam Rockwell). The status quo of their work is disrupted when Angela (Alison Lohman), the daughter that Roy never knew he had, bumps into his life.

Cage's performance as Roy is definitely the reason why you would want to watch this movie. He got very into character, a con artist with unique psychological traits where agoraphobia and OCD do not cover it all. Throughout the movie it's impossible not to feel for Roy when his eye twitches or whenever he has a nervous breakdown. This is most likely going to be the best obsessive-compulsive character performance you'll see in a while. Roy's organized and simple life is disrupted when a smart and outgoing daughter shows up, somewhat out of nowhere. Lohman's performance as Angela could be described as a unique balance between "lovable young lady with parent issues" and "sneaky little brat that wants things her way", resulting in a very solid performance (note that she was 24 at the time, 10 years older than her character). Frank, Rockwell's character, is an eager protégé trying to convince Roy into going for big hit, instead of the usual "simple is safe". Frank's passive-aggressive patience to deal with Roy's shenanigans adds a hint of comedy to the movie.

The relationship between Roy and Angela actually remembers Leon, the Professional (1994) at some point. It's always refreshing to see small homages to certain movies – and this one by Scott and Cage is a refreshing, 9 year gap fill. Also, two other things should be mentioned. First, the small but decisive aspect that Roy always uses matchsticks to light his cigarettes, overlapping a character performance with the title. Second, it's based on a novel by Eric Garcia, with the same title as the movie.

An overall brilliant performance from these three characters and starting plot would be more than enough for anyone to watch this piece. However, the plot twist at the end, even though it's not that predictable, could be disliked by many (me included). Still, it's a movie worth watching, and one that I would recommend given Cage's performance and character.

I know he won an Oscar for another film (don't get me started on that!), but this performance is really the one I regard as his crowning achievement. He's so convincing as a man who's totally out of control even when he appears to be in control that it's like a spinning top which doesn't really look like it's moving fast at all.

Sam Rockwell and Cage are partners, if you can call Cage's tic laden role a man who ever really connects with anybody at all. They con for a living and are quite accomplished at the game. So when his new challenge, a teenage daughter he had no contact with up till now, enters and shakes up his OCD world, this walking, talking repetitive routine he calls life gets flipped over into something resembling a normal existence.

The great Bruce McGill appears as someone you don't want to cross, unless it's out of his way to avoid the inevitable trouble. He fakes humbleness and charisma perfectly until the cobra he really is gets uncoiled and strikes.

This is an odd choice for Ridley Scott to direct. I'm glad he made it, as this film is as great socio-comedically as "Blade Runner" was poignantly techno-emotional. "Matchstick Men" gets under your skin, in funny and tragic ways, usually simultaneously. There really are men out there like Cage's Roy, as disturbing as that might be. Here Cage gets to be a three dimensional person and not just the human function of a lame action formula.

Ridley Scott and Nicolas Cage deliver some of their best and most intelligent work in a few years, even if Matchstick Men is not quite either's great contribution for this year in film. What they have done, from Eric Garcia's novel (adapted by The Griffins), come off rather entertaining, if anything else, and boasts much more thought than would usually be attributed to such a Hollywood film. Nicolas Cage, who plays Roy, part anxious/obsessive compulsive, part sly con man, and part father to a daughter he never knew he had, is a main reason to see this movie. His performance is on par with someone like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets for watch-ability of a truly sad lifestyle, and while Nicholson's performance was and still is funnier and more charming, Cage gets so into his character, the little mannerisms that pop up more often than expected, that we feel for the guy even as his eyes get twitchy and goes over certain spots in his house like a detective. He may be the most believable obsessive compulsive/con man you'll see in a long while. Add then an outgoing, occasionally sneaky daughter (Alison Lohman in a performance that skillfully balances sweetness and irritability, sorrow and playfulness in a teenage girl) to the mix, along with a protégé-cum-partner (a cool Sam Rockwell) who has a love/loathe relationship Roy, and there's the map work for an interesting, if here and there predictable, drama/comedy/crime film.

Along with the performances, which are all above average (Cage could be deserved of an Oscar nomination come February, and Lohman could deserve the win possibly), is the visual framework that Scott pushes in each scene. By getting certain camera tricks, and fantastic editing by Dody Dorn (of 'Memento' fame), the viewer can really get into Roy's head even in the smaller scenes, the ones that have little to do with the plot and only to do with the neuroses of Roy (there is even a little touch that I loved when Roy is waiting online early in the film at the supermarket, and the music in the background is an excerpt of the mental hospital music from 'Cuckoo's Nest'). This echoes the style that Scorsese used in Bringing out the Dead, also with Cage, in moving the film to get so into the mood that the story, no matter how intriguing and important, becomes secondary.

Which brings me to my own personal beef with the movie, and that is the last fifteen minutes or so. It was clever, up to a point, but as it unfolded, no matter how much I was still emotionally involved with these people, I felt that the twists (I won't reveal them here) undermined a lot of the rest of the film. It will be based on viewer to viewer, but I just thought that it did a little too much to jab at Roy's lifestyle. And yet, when I walked out of the theater, though I wasn't sure I had seen anything spectacular, I didn't feel like I had wasted time and money either. Matchstick Men is witty, sometimes wonderful moviemaking.