Picture this movie pitch: an obsessive/compulsive man who runs the con game for a living is re-united with his estranged 14-year old daughter. It may sound like a difficult premise to pull off, but throughout most of Matchstick Men, it works and it works very well. Bringing to mind such great con flicks as The Sting and Sneakers, it also manages to successfully be a character piece, a charming drama and a frequently suspenseful movie.
Nicolas Cage turns in another formidable performance as Roy, a grifter who is as meticulous about cleanliness as he is about putting up psychological walls around his enclosed lifestyle. His partner is Frank (Sam Rockwell), a protege with a tendency to tell it like it is. Together, they swindle small-timers and big-timers until one day, after a manic visit to his therapist Dr. Klein (Bruce Altman), Roy decides to initiate contact with his long-lost daughter. Needless to say, Roy's parenting skills eventually develop into coaching his tricks of the trade to her until an elaborate set-up threatens to call Roy's scruples and child-rearing skills into question.
The picture is not without its quibbles. There is a sequence everyone will be able to spot coming a mile away concerning a placebo acting as a substitute for Roy's medication. Some of the prerequisite bonding scenes between Roy and Angela seem out of place, setting aside the fact that the plot device of "the daughter he never knew he had" ran its course years ago. And casting TV veteran Bruce McGill as the Bad Guy is tiring as well as distractingly familiar.
Still, screenwriters Nicholas and Ted Griffin manage to weave a lot of story arcs together with some shiny dialogue and innovative relationships between the characters. As always, Cage is the beating, bleeding heart of the film, and if his incorporation of physical ticks and grunts to the character of Roy don't earn him an Academy Award nomination, perhaps his ability to make an ordinarily loathsome swindler into a protagonist that the audience can (and should) care about, will. Not familiar with Rockwell or Lohman's work, it's fair to say that the former does the best he can with his one-dimensional role, while the latter seems generally at ease in every sceen and is a presence to watch for in subsequent pictures. Lohman's scenes with Cage contain an abundance of chemistry that carries throughout the film.
If Matchstick Men is the kind of project that director Ridley Scott is giving a whirl now, I'll gladly take it any day over his mega-hyped disappointments such as Gladiator or Alien. Special effects epics are no substitute for well-told stories. In the end, more than anything else, this film does tell a great story that sneaks in an unusual set of circumstances for redemption without downplaying to the audience. It also happens to be one of the most compelling films I've seen 2003 offer to date.
