Posted: 09/15/2003

Matchstick Men

(2003)

by Hank Yuloff

Watch your wallet when you watch these cons operate.

I love a good con artist movie. The Sting (1973), Confidence (2003), The Grifters (1990), Heartbreakers (2001), Femme Fatale (2002), come to mind without even searching the data base. It is fun to see that one last hook or plot twist that lets you leave the theater talking about the movie and searching for the clues that would have let you figure out the ending a lot earlier. That is the best part of movie entertainment.

For that reason, I like Matchstick Men. For obvious reasons I won’t let you in on the kicker, but it is worth the ride. Not to say I don’t have a few problems with it, but it is good enough for me to give Matchstick Men a definite see recommendation.

Nicolas Cage (Adaptation, Moonstuck) and Sam Rockwell (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) are Roy Waller and Frank Mercer. They are a pair of conmen who sell $49 water treatment systems for $300 with the promise that the person that they just called with this proposition will win one of three unbelievable prizes just for buying. Then they actually go to those people’s homes and, posing as Federal agents, tell the people they have been ripped off. The best part is that they actually get these people to give them access into their bank accounts to check and see if their checks have been cashed. So a $300 con becomes a bank balance emptying con.

What makes Cage’s character interesting is that he is agoraphobic and obsessive compulsive to the extreme. Cage shows us how unable he is to control the problems he has. It’s as if he were an alcoholic telling us that the problem isn’t that he wants a drink, it is that he wants 10. You become uncomfortable watching him and are thankful at the same time that you do not have the same problems. Mercer understands this problem but rather than use consider it a handicap, uses it as a consistent point of teasing - as any friend would to someone he respects.

After the characters and their M.O. are established, the movie begins two different story lines. First, Mercer finds a big, big fish for them to reel in and at the same time, Waller’s 14-year-old daughter, Angela, comes into his life for the very first time. Angela is played by Alison Lohman (White Oleander). I thought she was a lot younger than the 23 year old she is because she completely nailed the age. The big fish is Bruce McGill (Animal House, Live From Baghdad).

That’s all you get of the story because pimping it like the LA Times would just be a crime. It gets really good and the interactions of a new relationship between Waller and his daughter are priceless. It’s fun to watch him become a parent. Cage and Rockwell are first rate. They play off each other well and you don’t for a minute feel it is a forced relationship. Which makes the final cons all the better.

The “fourth act,” or epilogue, where you get the truth behind all of the cons going on it non anticlimactic. Strings are mostly tied up in a satisfactory way and there were only a couple of holes in the plot. Bravo to script writer Nicholas Grifin (based on Eric Garcia’s book). This lack of problems with the plot were surprising since this is his first time out of the gate. Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down, Gladiator) took this good story and did it justice in the telling. What isn’t shown is just as what does get on the screen and that makes the magic all the better.

Hank Yuloff would never con you into seeing a bad movie. Like anyone who told you to see Lovely and Amazing. Or Swept Away.

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