That would make for a pretty dull review though, so I shall elaborate. Cage plays Roy, a con artist with neurosis piled on top of one another like a stack of pancakes. He has nervous ticks, he has anxiety attacks, he's obsessive compulsive, etc. Based on that you wouldn't expect him to be much of a con man, sory con artist, would you? Actually, he's excellent. With the help of some drugs to calm his many problems, he's able to function. He works with a partner Frank (Sam Rockwell), a younger man learning the ropes from Roy. He is Roy's polar opposite. He's calm and confident. While Roy sets an appearance designed to let him blend in, Frank stands out like a sore thumb. So naturally they compliment one another well.
Their operation goes awry when Roy accidently dumps all his pills down the drain and discovers his less than authentic doctor has skipped town. Frank sends him to a shrink he knows to help Roy get some help and hopefully, more drugs. The doctor insists on actually talking with Roy rather than just prescribing something. It comes out that Roy was once married and his wife left him, doing so before giving birth to their child. Roy suddenly becomes obsessed with the idea of this child and has the doctor help track it down. This turns out to be 14 year old Angela (Alison Lohman). The two hit it off well and soon she's spending extended visits at his house.
Roy tries to hide his occupation, such as it is, from her but being a smart kid she figures out he isn't being straight with her. Soon she gets it out of him and is begging him to teach her his craft. He resists but ultimately can't refuse. His daughter's fascination with his work is impossible to deny. So in no time, Roy has gone from being a neurotic bachelor criminal to an almost functioning father of a budding crime family. Going any further into the plot would do you a disservice so I'll stop there.
The movie is startling subtle, particularly when you consider it was directed by the man who brought us such films as Alien, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. Ridley Scott has always had a great eye for visuals and has generally been a steady helmer but virtually nothing in his filmography indicated that he had a movie like Matchstick Men in him somewhere. This could have easily been a fairly cartoonish movie with overblown characters and motives but he keeps it restrained, never overplaying it, always feeding us just the right amount of information.
Cage follows up a brilliant double performance in Adaptation with this gem. He is fully of tics and nervous energy but keeps a lid on it so as not to go over the top. Observant viewers will note that the level of his tics at any given moment serve as an excellent guage of the character's stability. The eye opener of a performance though goes to Alison Lohman who absolutely lights up the screen when ever she's on it. She crackles with energy and life and hits the story almost instantly likable. She then proceeds to leverage that and burrows right into the heart. It's a great piece of work, the kind of performance that makes you look forward to her next movie. Astonishingly, this 24 year old is utterly convincing as 14. Sam Rockwell rounds out the major characters and is very good but doesn't have nearly enough screen time to compete with Cage or Lohman. They simply own this film. Watching the two together is highly engaging. The two characters are discovering each other but also discovering what their absence has left them without over the years. Their chemistry is spectacular.
There are three major storylines here and each one is important and handled as completely as if it was the only storyline. There have been con men movies before like The Grifters or The Sting. There have been movies about obsessive compulsives before like As Good As It Gets. And there have been movies about being reunited with lost family. But here we have one movie that does all of that as well as can be imagined. It is so easy to love virtually any moment of the film. The first con we see Frank and Roy pulling is almost beautiful to watch it's so devious. The reunion of Roy and Angela is utterly charming. And just watching Roy try and control his emotional disorders is great. What makes the film great is the completeness of it. All of the storylines link together and enhance each other. It never feels jumbled or like too much. It all fits together like a jigsaw puzzle.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some Oscar nominations for this film. Cage and Lohman are fabulous and the script by Ted and Nicholas Griffin is wonderful. Scott does some great work directing here but it's so subtle that he may not get the appreciation he deserves for it. This is for me probably the year's most satisfying film, one that had me leaving the theater more energized than when I arrived.
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