Matchstick Men is much more than it might seem. The previews show a neurotic Nicholas Cage suddenly being transformed into a confident, suave con man. The movie itself, however, is nothing like this.
Cage plays Roy Waller a con-man right from the start who works in tandem with Frank Mercer, played by Sam Rockwell, to rip off old ladies and other vulnerable targets. They are not big-time crooks by any stretch of the imagination. It’s mostly credit-card fraud. (Not much more than the massive downloading being done by my roommate.)
Roy is, without a doubt, certifiably crazy. He eats nothing but canned tuna fish. He is petrified by the outside. He is also on some sort of medication that neither he nor anyone around him can identify, but he needs it to avoid going more out of his mind than he already is.
It is when this medicine is lost that Roy is pushed to the point of actually seeing a psychiatrist. (The medicine he had was from an underground doctor who had since left town.) The psychiatrist, superbly played by Bruce Altman, compels Roy to make contact with the daughter he has never seen because he divorced her mother before she was born.
This film could best be summed up as Roy’s odyssey to put his life back together. It really picks up momentum after Angela, his long-lost daughter, enters his life. It is then that he is forced to actually examine who he is.
There is a lot of action in this film and a lot of oddities to gawk at too. The polished acting of Nicholas Cage works well with the relatively new Sam Rockwell, last seen in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
Rockwell is every ounce the opposite of Cage. He is confident and messy as a pig, in contrast to Cage’s obsessive cleanliness and, at times, unbearable edginess. Rockwell’s range of acting seems limited. His role here is strikingly similar to his role in Confessions. Still though, he has a grittiness that is very enjoyable to watch.
As for Cage, he is in rare form. For a man who said recently he considered leaving acting, he seems to be at his peak. After being nominated for an Academy Award for his dual-self-role in Adaptation, he should certainly be considered again this year. His acting seems effortless and he has the striking ability to go convincingly from neurotic to confident flawlessly.
Matchstick Men is a great film, which is nice because the summer fare was disappointing at best. It also has a surprise ending that turns the whole plot on its head. With that said, go out and see it. This is an excellent movie for the one percent on campus who are dating and looking for something to do.
For others, this might be a nice break from that “30” of Pabst Blue Ribbon you are in the process of downing.
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