peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2022 05 27 MatchstickMen

Matchstick Men (2003)

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A Ridley Scott jag from Bladerunner, and incidentally starring Nicolas Cage. I enjoyed it on its own terms: a father (Cage) — daughter (Alison Lohman) con movie. Sam Rockwell does not escape his comfort zone. Everyone's OK, including Bruce McGill (a dial well familiar from many movies over many decades) and the uncredited Melora Walters from Magnolia. It's likely that if you're familiar with the genre you'll see everything coming, but from this distance and lack of buy-in I wondered if it wasn't riffing on other elements of Cage's career, like Raising Arizona, of which I remember nothing.

Roger Ebert: four stars. There is no downtime in this movie. David Edelstein was unimpressed, as were A. O. Scott and Stephanie Zacharek.