Hey Harry,  

Caught a screening of Matchstick Men last night and I just had to share, because frankly, this made me angry. Very, very angry.  

First off let me start by saying that Matchstick Men, Ridley Scott's latest, is like a really great date. No, I mean a really great date, a magical night that sweeps you off your feet and makes you fall hopelessly, deeply in love. This is the kind of date that no matter what plans you had going in, it has convinced you that no matter what...you're putting out. This person is going to own you body, mind and soul. And as the end of the date comes and you are about to propose giving yourself over...your date slips you some Ruffinol and has their way with you anyway. On their terms, without the slightest thought of your enjoyment. Oh sure, somewhere in the back of their mind, or even at the forefront of it, they think that this is just the way you like it. But it's not. Matchstick Men bends you over unwillingly and screws you in the ass so hard that you lose all affection you once felt for it and walk away feeling like the best experience you've had in a long while was instead cheap, meaningless and an utter waste of your time.  

Matchstick Men is robbery, pure and simple, rather than the con it pretends to be. In the film Nicholas Cage says "I never robbed anyone. They gave me their money. There's a difference." That, no doubt, will be Ridley Scott's excuse come Sept. 12th when this movie hits theatres.  

Now maybe I'm being unduly harsh in doling it out to Matchstick Men, but I can't help it. This film pissed me off. Why you might ask? Because for the first 2/3's of the film, it is absolutely, positively, amazingly, wonderfully fantastic. No doubt about it, the bulk of this is magic. Pure magic. A cinematic wonderland of delights proving to a feasts for the eyes, the soul and the mind.  

First and foremost you've got Nicholas Cage turning in one of his absolute best performances to date. He's in top form, delivering an Oscar caliber performance that never once makes you think "Wow, this will get him an Oscar" while you're watching it. Cage fully submerses himself in the dysfunction of Roy, a Obsessive/Compulsive con man, and he takes you along for the ride. This is one of those roles that totally makes you forget exactly who you're watching. You're not watching Nicholas Cage, you're watching Roy. And the performance is positively seamless. What I love about Roy is that he's deeply troubled, but his tics and his obsessive/compulsive tendencies aren't played for laughs. You're never supposed to laugh at Roy's dysfunction. Sure, it's funny to watch him try and rationalize himself to others, but Matchstick Men never stoops to trying to make you laugh at the cheap jokes.  

And to back up Cage's portrayal of OCD are some amazing visuals by Scott. I mean simply stellar. Odd camera work mixed with some very slick editing and the occasional use of visual effects make for the most riveting look at OCD to date. There's a shot when a sliding glass door is opened, allowing Cage to look out into the backyard, but the backyard he sees is flooded with bright yellow sunshine and millions of tiny pollen swirling about as if ready and waiting to infect Roy. You feel the tension well up within him and you can see, through his eyes, just why the outdoors scares the living hell out of him. It's simply unbelievable.  

And DEAR GOD ALMIGHTY is the writing sharp in this film. Razor sharp. Clever at every turn, this script uses every line economically, getting the most punch out of every word uttered. The humor is biting and the exposition soulful. Perfection, sheer perfection.  

But what would good would all this be if the supporting cast didn't deliver just as stunningly as the rest of the film? Well, no worries there.  

Alison Lohman. Holy. Fucking. Shit. I opened her IMDB page when I got home from this film to discover that not only is she not the 14 she is in the film, but that she's actually cough...turning 24 this month. Oh. Dear. God. Every moment she's on the screen, Lohman is not only a teenager. She's fucking 14. Not the typical gorgeous 14 going on 21 that Hollywood tries to pass off on us. No no no. Her every movement, her every breath, her every spoken word is that of a 14 year old girl. I swear to God I actually thought she really was 14. She's 100% bubble gum and knotted shoe laces. And she too is amazing. While you fall in love with Roy for all his faults, so too do you fall in love with the fractured girl who's just for the first time met her father and found him to actually care about her, something you gather she doesn't feel about her mother. Her character, devoid of the all out dysfunction of Roy, remains equally as fascinating as the two try to understand one another and find a common ground between their two very different lives. There's a moment when she begins to tell Roy about her experiences with boys. But unlike "Thirteen", in which men are quietly admitting to finding themselves strangely aroused by such behavior, you feel shocked, utterly disrupted and you don't want her to utter another single syllable about such things. Ridley and Lohman deliver upon a platter the experience of what it's like to be a parent, without ever actually having to be one.  

And then there's Sam Rockwell. What can really be said about a Rockwell performance that hasn't already been said. he is, very simply, one of the absolute best supporting actors working in Hollywood today. Sam isn't really leading man material, unless the leading man is a very damaged and strange character (like his turn as Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind). Instead, he is the potatoes in the steak dinner. Really great potatoes, chock full of sour cream, chives, bacon and all other necessary forms of substance and flavor. From his funny as all hell performance as Guy, the token casualty, in Galaxy Quest, to his sickening portrayal of Wild Bill in The Green Mile, Rockwell always adds a little something special to everything he touches. Matchstick Men is no different. While certainly not an amazingly interesting character, not compared to the depth of both Cage and Lohman's characters, Rockwell simply OWNS every line that spills out of his mouth. He adds so much character to a character that really lacks...well...character. He simply does what he does best and provides a perfect sounding board for Nicholas Cage to bounce shit off from.  

So, with all this perfection, what could go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? Well, to even hint at what goes wrong I have to delve very deeply into to spoiler territory, absolutely spoiling the third act for you. So if you have any plans on seeing this film pure, by all means, bail out now and hit that back button, because even hinting at what I'm about to say will spoil it.  

Spoilers!  

Alright folks, this is where the shit hits the fan; where a good thing goes downhill so fast that it makes your head spin. Matchstick Men, the premise and almost everything about it...is a con. I know I said it's a robbery, not a con, but it is so only because the con is so fucking bad. Lohman isn't really his daughter and everything that happens during the last two thirds of the film is all an elaborate con perpetrated upon Roy. The problem is, anyone with half a brain sees the con coming a mile away. Fifteen minutes into the movie the thought struck me "Oh, God. Please don't be a con. This movies gonna be a con. She's not really his daughter, just someone trying to fuck him out of something. No, no, no. Ridley wouldn't do that. This movies too good already to do that." But the thoughts persisted. I watched the scenes from two points of view, one as they were intended to be seen and another from the vantage point of knowing that this might all be a set up.  

I watched and I waited. And God damnit! It was a set up. But what's wrong with it being a con, you might ask. That could be cool. Yeah, it could be, if not for two reasons.  

Reason 1: It's not a good con. Look at films like "The Sting", "Shallow Grave" and "The Usual Suspects". Now those are great con films. The end of those films result in fantastic twists, the results of which catches the audience completely unaware. A good con is one in which you make your mark Believe that they're FORCING you to do exactly what you want to do and doing so will actually result in more trouble for you. In the Usual Suspects, Chazz Palmanteri's Agent Dave Kujan thinks he's forcing Verbal Kint to spill his guts, when in actuality, Verbal WANTS nothing more than to spin his bullshit to the cops, in order to throw them off his scent just long enough so he can get away. but both Kujan AND the audience think it's Verbal's only option. He can't say no. Shallow Grave ends the same way. The Audience, as well as Juliet, thinks that Ewen McGregor's Alex wants nothing more than to escape with the case of money. Instead, that isn't it at all. He wants Juliet to flee with the case, because it's filled with paper. The money's under the floorboards. But here, at every instance of this elaborate con, Roy is given every chance to say no, and the players involved are always forcing themselves into the position to set things up rather than allowing Roy, an experienced and talented conman, to force them into it. If Roy was half the conman he's supposed to be in the film, he would have seen this coming just a few moments later than the audience. But only because we've seen the trailer.  

Roy acts irrationally, not like a true mark who makes what they believe to be informed decisions, but more like a bumbling buffoon stumbling his way into a trap that could have gone wrong at any point. One rational decision, one accident avoided, and the whole game would have been up. There was no indication that Roy wanted to meet his "Daughter", but he did. There was absolutely no reason for an untrusting conman to sign over his safety deposit box privileges to the "Daughter" he's known for only a couple of days. And there was certainly no real reason for him not to speak to his ex-wife/ex-girlfriend, especially after he had talked to a lawyer about joint custody. And there's about a dozen other accidents or moments of faulty logic in which the con could have been up at any given time, but instead, wasn't.  

And reason 2: Matchstick Men plays itself out like a film out of the golden age of the 70's cinema revival. The type of film that puts it's focus solely upon the art of characterization to drive the story. The type of film not afraid to take risks and be a great story about flawed characters that never bores the audience and allows the story to serve the characters, not vice versa. We, as an audience don't WANT to see any more action or twists than the film already has had to offer. We have fallen in love with the characters of Matchstick Men and we want to see the situations presented play out to their logical conclusion. Will Roy leave the life of a conman to play the role of father? Will Angela follow Roy's example or will she try to follow in her fathers past footsteps? And how will Frank react when his partner and mentor ups and quits the business? Will he confront Roy, convinced that he is falling for the ultimate con: giving up his profession and life simply to give a stable environment to someone who has none?  

That's the movie you want to see after the first 2/3rd's of Matchstick Men. Those are the questions you want answered. But that's not the movie you get. Instead, you get the typical Hollywood suckerpunch ending in which they try their damndest to catch you off guard to have you leave the theatre talking about how surprised you were. Instead it angered some and merely disappointed others.  

But that's not where this travesty ends. Oh no. As Roy realizes he's been conned, we're treated to Rockwell reading a note in Voice Over that explains himself ala Charles Bronson's note at the end of "The Mechanic". And for a moment, there's hope. Hope that Roy has set up some elaborate revenge, just as Bronson did to Jan-Michael Vincent. You think, "Of course this con was obvious. The real con is yet to come. "The Sting" con is coming. Roy was SUPPOSED to be taken like this, only so he could pull his con instead.  

Nope. That's not what happens. Not at all. Instead, it's all exactly as presented, and Roy ends up going to his ex-wife's house to find Angela. Oops...it's simply to further explain to the audience that Angela wasn't real. So does his real daughter, or perhaps son, answer the door, forcing Roy to have to deal with his shit all over again? Is he going to have to reintroduce himself to the child he never really knew, only to find that this child perhaps wants nothing to do with a father they've never met?  

Nope. That's not what happens either. Instead, we get "Oh, the baby? That's why you're here. I miscarried." And boy does that line sound forced. For the first time in the film, something truly artificial creeps in. And then it all goes to hell from there. Oh no, it gets worse, much worse, separated by one more perfect moment that at this point, is far more than this film deserves.  

Fast forward to a year later and we get to spend a few minutes with Roy in his NEW IMPROVED SAVINGS FREE LIFE. This is the typical Hollywood Must-Have-a-Happy-Ending-at-Any-Cost ending, showing us a life that Roy never really earns onscreen and frankly, doesn't deserve after so foolishly falling for such a faulty, elaborate con. And the final shot of the movie, dear god, if the final shot isn't just the ultimate final insult, the "Bitch get your own towel" of this audience molestation, then I don't know what is.  

Now some of you might be thinking that since this was adapted from a book, that the ending must stay true to the book. That's just how it goes. Well, far be it from Ridley Scott to change the terrible ending of his source material. I mean, it's not like he's done it before coughcoughHannibalcough. No this ending is wrong, so wrong, that all the perfection that this film had going for it ends up flushed by it's own need to be clever.  

This was a great character drama on it's way to becoming a cinema classic. It really was that good. But sorry folks, what this film promises with all it's elaborate wrapping is spoiled by the cheap gift inside. Ridley Scott should know better than this, he really should.  

Pyul Mactackle