Game, Set, and "Match"
America seems to love movies where the “hero” really isn’t a hero, he or she is really a crook. The Sting and Catch Me If You Can come to mind immediately, and one wonders if they came into director Ridley Scott’s head as he made this film. Matchstick Men borrows from the best elements of those movies and takes a couple of cliches along for the ride such as the “long-lost daughter newly reunited with her father“ one. Stolen elements and cliches don’t normally mean a good movie, but Matchstick Men overcomes this and gets nearly everything right.    Roy Waller (Nicolas Cage) is a matchstick man, a small time con artist. He and his partner, Frank (Sam Rockwell)
run small-time cons selling overpriced water aerators out of a nondescript office. Then they show up to the people who’ve purchased them, present themselves as fraud investigators, and get access to their bank accounts. Pretty ingenious. But all is not well; Roy is an obsessive-compulsive clean freak and comes complete with random tics and twitches. Though Roy and Frank are certainly not poor, they have yet to pull over a really big con and with Roy’s retirement somewhat imminent, Frank’s getting antsy.    In the midst of this problem, we are also introduced to the possibility that Roy has a daughter. Sure enough, Roy’s psychiatrist contacts his ex-wife and soon Angela (Alison Lohman), a typical 14-year-old teenager is meeting her father for the first time. As Roy alternately succeeds and fails to relate to Angela, Frank has caught wind of a sure thing con involving the exchange of British pounds for American dollars. Ultimately, Roy has to decide whether or not to tell his daughter the truth about his life, and if he does, what will the consequences be?    The main charm of Matchstick Men is watching everything unfold. There are so many “con-artist” movies that they can’t have many surprises these days, but the movie knows this and instead puts you at ease with a polished script and excellent acting. While Cage has been criticized in the past for using too many “tricks” instead of acting, he pulls out all the necessary stops on twitchy, sweet Roy. This is a great performance and he doesn’t let up for two hours. Rockwell is good as his flashier, smoother counterpart and Lohman doesn’t miss a beat playing a character ten years her junior.    It seems that Ridley Scott needed a break after the big budget epics of Black Hawk Down, Hannibal, and Gladiator and has returned to a very character based drama along the lines of Thelma and Louise. It’s a tight script full of natural dialogue. When Angela makes fun of the phrase ‘Crime doesn’t pay’ Roy naturally responds that, “Crime does pay. It just doesn’t pay well.” The quality of filmmaking is evident on every cell of the film; the film is beautiful to look at. This is a very professionally made film with nary a wrong note sounded by the editing, music, or cinematography.    Ultimately, the film evokes the aforementioned Catch Me If You Can with its breezy tone and nostalgia for the past (though the film takes place in the present, the costuming, sets, and music are very much back in the 60s). If there is a problem, it is in the last fifteen minutes. While this epilogue is quite unnecessary, it doesn’t detract from the film the way the endings of Signs and the more recent Open Range did. Also, after the final twist, you begin to wonder if everything makes sense when viewed in that light and it probably does, but it doesn’t really matter.    Though the movie deals with serious topics of OCD and the trials of separated parents, it is not meant to be analyzed and pulled apart. Just sit down and enjoy the ride, even if you do know where it’s going.
		Grade: A-