Review for Matchstick Men

Movie Famous

follow this blog

10 followers

79 daily readers

rank of 1169

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

Review for Matchstick Men

March 26th 2010 10:01

Today's review ends our theme of "Bad Men with Good Morals." I have heard about this movie and was fortunate to see it the other day for the first time. I really liked it (I am a big fan of Nicholas Cage and Sam Rockwell!) Roy Waller (Nicolas Cage, who starred in one of my favorite movies "City of Angels

but there are just too MANY to name for him, he truly is "movie famous!") is an obsessive-compulsive (and he has got it bad with a touch of agoraphobia!) con artist who is teaching his partner Frank Mercer (Sam Rockwell, who I saw for the first time in "Charlie's Angels

loved his dancing!) the tricks of the trade. We see how they scam people out of their money without using a gun. They pull scams such as selling $50 water filters to people for over $300 and promising them that they have won a big prize, which they will never receive. One day, Nicholas runs out of his anti-anxiety pills. In order to refill his prescription, he needs to visit a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist suggests that something is eating at him deep down. Nicholas admits that a long time ago, he was with a woman who was pregnant as they broke up and he wonders about the child, if this woman even had the baby. Nicholas and the psychiatrist agree that this woman should be contacted which Nicholas asks him to do (this is very key to the entire movie!) It turns out that Nicholas does have a daughter who would like to meet him. Meanwhile, as they are about to pull off a really big con, Angela (Alison Lohman, starred in my other review of "Drag Me to Hell

is great in this role!) who is the 14-year-old daughter of Cage, arrives. She has never seen her father and absolutely adores being around him and imposes herself upon him and his life (not good for a con artist!) They end up bonding and she finds out (by snooping in his stuff!) that he is not an antiques dealer which he has told her but something much more deviant. When he tells her the truth, she begs him to let her pull a con with him, which he does. She is excellent but at the end of the con (which was a very good one, no one would ever suspect!) Nicholas makes her return the money to the woman they just conned. Eventually, Angela puts their biggest swindle in jeopardy. Nicholas, of course, is a "bad man" but throughout the movie, he clearly has a "heart of gold." We see him bonding with his daughter, even when she angers him and she cries, he apologizes immediately, feeling terrible! He made her give back the money from her first scam (what con artist does THAT!) and he talks about how he wishes he didn't have to do this for a living. I think the most beautiful example of his "heart of gold" is evident at the end of the movie which I will not reveal (you have to see it for yourself!) This movie builds VERY slowly and seems very long (It's almost as if the writer is trying to convince us that Nicholas really IS a good guy!) but the ending is amazing! You never see it coming and you feel like you have been conned! Good movie (and GREAT music!) Check out the trailer below!