Matchstick Men: Crime doesn't pay

Ocean's 11 made a life of crime seem like a flashy, glitzy party. The Italian Job portrayed a career of thievery as dangerous but replete with witty repartee, deep personal loyalties and Cooper MINIs. In contrast to the fun-focused attitudes of those films, Matchstick Men shows a criminal's life as sporadically unpredictable but mostly dull and filled with Windex.

Matchstick Men simply fails to recognize the key to success in the crime-comedy genre: complicated scheming to obtain a simple objective. It came close, but screenwriters Nicholas and Ted Griffin, who adapted the movie from Eric Gracia's novel, reversed the formula to little success. In Matchstick Men, con artists Roy and Frank prepare an incomprehensible and criminally uninteresting sham, but after much wind-up, the implementation is as simple as switching two briefcases. It's just not worth the wait.

Nicolas Cage is Roy, the leader of a two-man con squad that tricks innocent housewives into buying $50 water filtration devices for over $700. Suffering from agoraphobia (fear of the outdoors) and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Roy barely functions outside his work, spending most of his time indoors crawling around on the floor picking bits of lint off of the carpet. After an accident involving Roy's pills and the garbage disposal has Roy scouring the house for traces of dust and wiping fingerprints off the phone, Frank (Sam Rockwell), his partner in crime, packs him off to a shrink.

Calmed by his new doctor's influence, Roy agrees to one of Frank's long-time plans to make bigger money. Roy and Frank's greatest con should be a thing of captivating beauty and artful simplicity, so that us laymen in the audience can appreciate their style, but also understand their mission. It is instead a muddled, obscure affair involving something to do with international exchange rates—badly explained in the movie, their con is frankly too boring to merit the effort it takes to comprehend it.

Generally, the goal in a flick such as Matchstick Men should be definable in one statement, like steal the gold, or rob the casino. Thus, the audience is taken into the criminals' confidence and feels more personally connected to the film, delighted by the twisty, exciting way the plan unfolds as it approaches the known objective. When the audience doesn't understand that objective, the suspense and empathy for the characters also dissolves. I simply couldn't care what happened to Roy and Frank in the end. Though this may seem formulaic, the fact is that one of the major plot twists at the end was so well telegraphed that being uniquely structured wasn't enough to save Matchstick Men from predictability.

The vehicle of most of Matchstick Men's plot twists, including the most unexpected one, comes in the form of 14-year-old Angela (Alison Lohman), Roy's daughter from a long-ago marriage who suddenly enters his life, wiling him with her perky pig-tails and briefly curing his addiction to Windex with her slovenly ways. The film skips over all the stereotypical angst of the blame-game (Roy did not even know that Angela existed before his therapist put them in touch), and Angela and Roy hit it off suspiciously quickly. Though unrealistic, their comfortable dynamic enlivens the film. Roy begins teaching Angela small-time cons, and she takes to the business immediately, even helping him out with the big job.

Director Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down, Red Dragon) wisely largely ignores Frank and Roy's boring scheme and instead chooses to develop the relationship between Roy and Angela and Roy and Frank, both of which develop some of the contradictions in Roy's character. Roy is comfortable teaching Angela how to win $300 off unsuspecting ladies in the laundromat, yet he won't let her keep it. "I would not be a responsible father if I let you keep take her money," he explains. Ashamed that he profits off the misery of others, Roy nevertheless instructs and guides Frank to become better at his work. In these scenes is the cleverness and humor missing from the overall plan.

Cage's portrayal of Roy is similar to his work as Charlie Kaufman in his last film, Adaptation. Different neurosis, same fidgety, extremely kinetic depiction. Roy has a tendency of speaking very quickly then sort of sitting back and blinking at you, which is unnerving, but also endearing and amusing. However, his character lacks depth—Cage seems to be doing more of an imitation, a caricature really, of Roy then developing him into a human being. He bases his performance almost solely on body language, failing to add meaningful vocal inflections to Roy that might have defined him more humanly.

Lohman is similarly exaggerated, but Angela is a less complex character. Her stubborn happy-go-lucky attitude is aimed at finding the best in her father and accepting him and her situation for what they are. Lohman is perfectly adolescent and contagiously perky, and good foil for Roy.

Should Matchstick Men have been about a father/daughter con team, it would have been much more entertaining. As it is, the premise of the plot is unengaging and the final twist predictable- it's the only logical explanation for some of Angela, Roy, and Frank's more inexplicable interactions. This is the rare example where following a formula would have produced better results.

Matchstick Men is rated PG-13 for thematic elements, violence, some sexual content, and language.