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Diagnosing that the root of all Roy’s problems lie in his guilt over abandoning his wife some fourteen years previous, Dr Klein puts Roy back in touch with Angela, the daughter whose existence he’d long suspected but never confirmed. His tightly ordered lifestyle begins to unravel after Angela lands on his doorstep needing a place to stay, and Roy grapples with the challenges of fatherhood whilst trying to keep his dubious employment credentials a secret from her. Angela however is one smart cookie, and soon extracts the truth from her father, begging to be let in on the act. Roy is a crook with a conscience, and despite initial reservations he soon relents and teaches her a few tricks of the trade, as father and daughter discover some common ground and begin to bond. Honoured with a knighthood in 2002 for services to the movie making industry, Sir Ridley Scott has been at the helm of some of the most successful movies of the past two decades, directing Thelma & Louise, Alien and Gladiator to name but a few. However, this is his latest offering isn’t set to become a crown jewel in his back catalogue. The plot of Matchstick Men is substantial enough to keep the audiences attention for the duration, as it meanders along in an inoffensive two-dimensional kind of way. This movie has the potential to be very good - all the ingredients are there - but an ill-conceived ending and inadequate twist in the tale at the movies climax ultimately betrays it. Instead of having audiences gleefully saying ‘ I didn’t see that one coming’ and sending their minds racing back through the past hour and a half searching for the clues that should now seem so obvious, instead the end simply doesn’t justify the means. The turn of events that begins with Roy being knocked unconscious and waking up in police custody realising that the scam has gone completely wrong and ends with the supposed ‘aha’ revelatory moment doesn’t have the desired effect at all. Instead its impact is severely muted and is nothing more than a cheap shot, a quick and easy way of bringing on the end credits. Ultimately Matchstick Men is a movie that tells rather than shows, and hereby lies its biggest weakness. Weighed down by dialogue heavy scenes, it demands very little engagement from its audience on anything more than a superficial level. You don’t need to think as everything is spelled out for you, right down to the ‘one year later’ sequence at the end, which does the worst possible thing, and tries to convince you that everything will come good in the end. Despite the limitations of the script they are working from Cage, Rockwell and Lohman should be credited for turning in solid, largely believable performances. The dysfunctional nature of Roy’s relationship with his daughter is strengthened by the vulnerability that newcomer Alison Lohman injects into her performance, offset by Nicolas Cage’s ability to bring quirky dysfunctional characters to life. Although it should be noted that consummate professional pro Cage overplays his hand at times, pushing Roy’s mannerisms and tics past the boundaries of realistic and into the ridiculous and at times plain annoying, which ultimately detracts from the movies narrative. The partnership between Roy and his protégé Frank is an interesting one. Rockwell and Cage are both incredibly charismatic actors who work well together, however their characters relationship is grossly underdeveloped, and largely ignored. In many ways Rockwell’s character is the antithesis of Cage’s but it as a dynamic that isn’t explored, so again when the plot twist arrives you are left wondering why you should care so much. Knowing that Ridley Scott and Nicolas Cage as director and actor are capable of infinitely better than Matchstick Men offers, and witnessing the untapped and largely ignored potential of relative newcomers Sam Rockwell and Alison Lohman, you can’t help but come away from this movie feeling like you’ve been a little conned.
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