In Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men, a phobic con artist played by Nicolas Cage decides to turn one last fraud after meeting the 14-year-old daughter he never knew. Nicholas and Ted Griffin’s script is a mess of clichés; it’s only a matter of time before Roy (Cage) meets daughter Angela (Alison Lohman) and the facial tics fade away and he forgets to take off his shoes inside his mod living room. Still, in a time when twist endings are a dime a dozen, this retro concoction’s clincher is of note: not because it forces us to reconfigure everything that transpires prior, but because it makes its very predictability part of its master fraud.
Matchstick Men’s con is written in everything from the sometimes tongue-in-cheek dialogue (“For some people, money is a foreign film without subtitles”) to the steely backdrops and retro songs that make it difficult to place the events of the story on an actual timeline, and part of the film’s genius is how Scott repeatedly pokes his audience with this aesthetic framework. Then again, Scott is usually his own worst enemy, so there’s no real excusing the cheap film-school tricks he employs throughout the film’s first half to evoke Roy’s compulsive behavior.
Scott’s frequently blurry, fast-moving camera exaggerates what a mannered but impressive Cage evokes just fine on his own with his character’s unharnessed blinking and compulsion to close doors not once, not twice, but three times. This stylistic noxiousness predictably subsides along with Roy’s compulsive behavior as soon as the incredible Lohman enters the picture.
But if you’re enticed by the clever con written in Matchstick Men’s mise-en-scène, it’s still a disappointment that the filmmakers don’t treat the sentimentality of the story (especially everything that transpires after the final trump card) with the kind of wit that governs its aesthetic. Those who’ve pleasantly coasted along with Matchstick Men’s sleek, retro groove may find themselves reminded of how Robert Altman coyly and viciously rubber-stamped The Player’s mordant Hollywood molestation with a clever bun in the oven.
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