Matchstick Men
Cast
Nicolas Cage .... Roy Waller
Sam Rockwell .... Frank Mercer
Alison Lohman .... Angela
Bruce Altman .... Dr. Klein
Bruce McGill .... Chuck Frechette
Directed by
Ridley Scott
Rater #2 has description and review.
Rater #1
Has Not Seen Movie
Rater #2
7/10. At first, it's hard to believe that Matchstick Men is a Ridley Scott
film. He's mainly known for his gruesome films, like Hannibal and
Alien. However, for each Black Hawk Down, there's a Thelma and
Louise. Matchstick Men is by no means a violent film, nor hard to
watch. In fact, out of all of the movies of 2003 so far, I'll bet
that this movie has more rewatch value than most. What really makes
Matchstick Men a realistic piece is the acting, which I will get into
later.
Nicolas Cage, in hopefully another Oscar nominated role, plays Roy, a
con man (artist, as he would correct you) with obsessive-compulsive
disorder. He and his partner Frank (Sam Rockwell) aren't in the big-
time, but still collect decent sums of money. However, he runs out of
his pills he needs to control some of his OCD, and his doctor's
moved, so he goes to a psychiatrist (Bruce Altman) in order to get
some more. In the course of it, he decides to see if his wife, who
was pregnant when they were divorced, has a child. Lo and behold, she
does, and 23-going-on-14 Angela (Alison Lohman) is introduced into
his life.
Roy, obviously, doesn't know the first thing about parenting, which
doesn't work well with Angela's semi-rebellious behavior. Also, to
thicken the plot even more, Roy and Frank are about to perform a huge
con on someone, and don't want anyone in their way. Roy doesn't want
Angela to know about his real profession (he tells everyone he's into
antiquing). And then things start to heat up.
Going into Matchstick Men, I was expecting something like Ocean's
Eleven, a light-hearted crime caper (not necessarily a comedy), and
that's what I got. Although it's not as entertaining nor as confusing
as Ocean's Eleven, they're both good movies in their own right.
Matchstick Men runs too long at about 110 minutes, but I never felt
like checking my watch or wanting to leave. I have read a little of
the book by Eric Garcia (it didn't really keep my interest), but not
much. Therefore, throughout the movie, I had no idea what was going
to happen. At the ending "twist", I predicted it right before Roy
did, so I was happy, not only for myself for being able to guess it,
but how Scott made the movie go out, I had no idea.
Cage, unlike Adaptation., deserves whatever awards or nominations he
manages to get. Not only did he make me believe that, yes, he was Roy
the con man, but he was also Roy the obsessive-compulsive. The only
other actor I have seen portray someone with OCD so well is Tony
Shalhoub as Adrian Monk on TV's Monk. The way that he acted was so
realistic. However (this is a script complaint), about halfway
through or so, he basically lost his OCD. Anyway, Rockwell added
another impressive performance, but he didn't have much to do/work
with. Lohman impressed me, very much so. I didn't expect so much out
of her.
This may be considered going off on a tangent, but it makes sense
that Robert Zemeckis is an executive producer. He's a prot�g� of
Steven Speilberg, possibly most famous for his false endings. If the
last ten minutes or so had been slashed off, then maybe Matchstick
Men could have gotten a higher rating. However, it wasn't, so the
rating is a solid 7/10.
Rater #3
Has Not Seen Movie.
Rater #4
Has Not Seen Movie.
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, violence, some sexual content and language.
Running time: 116 minutes
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