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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Matchstick Men is directed with confidence by Ridley Scott, who has
recently brought to screen much more epic stories in the likes of Gladiator
and Black Hawk Down. Matchstick is adapted to the screen by Nicholas and
Ted Griffin from Eric Garcia’s thriller novel. The actors make this con
artist film seem like easy pickings, even as the flimflam schemes eventually
peter out and all we’re left to ponder are the artful performances. I was
left wondering just how these smooth operators slickly put the con on the
viewer with so much familiar grifter genre formula stuff, that I must take
my hat off to them for getting over; that is, if I still have a hat after
leaving the theater. Afterwards, like any player in a shellgame, I realized
that there was not much here besides the performances. I was also impressed
by the sleek backdrop settings and the beautifully framed shots of Nic
Cage’s sterile mod pad, and how clever the filmmaker was in distracting
me from keeping an eye on the real game going on. But Scott got caught
in all his cleverness, and messed up the film’s almost perfect stagings
by staying around too long after the Big Scam in order to stay with the
undeserving main character.

Nicolas Cage is Roy, a veteran grifter who has a bundle stashed away
in a safety deposit box proving how crime pays handsomely (now in a mainstream
film such as this one, you can readily guess that such an amoral character
in the end either gets his come-uppance or must drastically change his
lifestyle and see the light). Roy’s a loner, divorced fourteen years ago,
living in a mod richly carpeted pad with an unused swimming pool but no
TV in southern California and is plagued by a number of neuroses including
facial tics, an obsessive-compulsive disorder, agoraphobia, anxiety attacks,
a compulsion for cleanliness, and many other disorders. His young ambitious
protégé is a slovenly, wisecracking, con-man sidekick named
Frank (Sam Rockwell). They are seen together working a telemarketing scam
where
they randomly call their vics, selling overpriced home “water filtration
systems” by pretending to give away nonexistent luxury prizes. They not
only get the poor vic once, but work a scheme where they pose as federal
agents investigating tax fraud to heartlessly dupe them again. 

When Roy accidently washes his pills down the drain and his illegal
supplier can’t be found, he seeks pills from a smooth therapist named Dr.
Klein (Altman) as he can’t function without his medication. During their
therapy session Roy mentions his former wife and gets Dr. Klein to call
since he is too frightened to speak to her. It results in his 14-year-old
daughter Angela (Alison Lohman, who is actally 23), someone he didn’t know
existed, coming to stay with him for a weekend and then staying for the
summer break. Their bouncy relationship is magical, as Roy doesn’t know
how to be a father and she only knows how to push all his buttons. But
they somehow bond, and Roy starts having conscience pangs and thinks he
might be ready to change his criminal ways and stop being a basket case.

But as a favor to Frank, Roy decides to go for one big last money
laundering job on a mark named Chuck (McGill) that Frank has setup for
the kill. They are going to pull the “Jamaican switch,” but somehow things
get changed at the last second and Angela gets involved in the scheme. 

Things were going along fine at this point, but after the final scam
is played out as its trump card the film reshuffles its hand and messes
up the fixed game it so artfully setup by going into a preachy moralistic
tidy ending. That was enough to expose Ridley Scott for not having the
heart to go all the way and play out this con game for real, as it was
entitled to go down. Scott mistakenly thinks we should really care about
a dirtbag like the Nic Cage character. In the end he turns this shellgame
into a human interest story and leaves the impression that the ruthless
con artist only exploited vics who were greedy and therefore they deserved
to be taken, and that really he’s not such a bad guy but only very good
at his craft. Scott should have saved such sentimentalities for another
film, it just didn’t fit here. Why in the world should I care about a guy
who heartlessly ripped off all kinds of victims! That’s a good enough reason
not to buy into this breezy human interest story about such sorry characters.