"Matchstick man" is another term for a con artist, a swindler, a grifter and Nicolas Cage plays a very good con artist in the deliciously crafty like father-like daughter black comedy Matchstick Men . . . at least when he's not fretting over his many phobias.
Matchstick Men is a funny, off-the-wall film with a sleight-of-hand trick worthy of its characters' cons. When Cage's twitchy Roy Waller teams up with Alison Lohman as his long-lost daughter, the film becomes a sort of 21st-century version of Paper Moon.
Roy is a walking mass of tics, grunts and neuroses, a man who must open and close a door three times -- and count the times -- before he actually goes through it. He shuffles through bottles of pills to calm him. When confronted with the great outdoors, his head spins in a woozy, seasick blur. He's terrified of getting dirt on his carpet and orders people to remove their shoes. His house is immaculate. "I thought about blowing my brains out," he tells his sympathetic new psychiatrist about his recent thoughts, "but that would mess up my carpet. . . . And that was a good day!"
Matchstick Men provides an insanely amusing outlet for Cage, even better and odder and edgier than his Academy Award-nominated performance as 180-degree opposite twin brothers in Adaptation. Roy is a character who flirts with being grandly annoying, at least if he weren't so zanily funny.
The movie is also a sort of release valve for director Ridley Scott, whose recent output -- Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Hannibal -- has been on the downbeat side. Scott hasn't had this much sly fun tweaking his characters and pulling the rug out from under an audience since Thelma & Louise.
And that's the joy of Matchstick Men. For the audience winds up being as bamboozled by the plot as are some of the movie's characters. Enough said! More would spoil the surprises Scott springs from the clever script by Nicholas and Ted Griffin, based on Eric Garcia's book.
Although Roy declares, "I barely get by being me," he loses his nervous tics when the chase is on and he's working a patsy. He prides himself on his elaborately concocted schemes, abetted by his slick and more than a little seedy partner, Frank (Sam Rockwell). Their latest is a money-laundering scam revolving around a gullible high-stakes player (Bruce McGill). Alarmed at being labeled a crook, Roy tells his shrink (Bruce Altman) that he doesn't steal from his clients. "They give me their money."
Yet Roy, a dedicated loner, thinks something is missing from his life. His pregnant wife left their stormy marriage 14 years earlier. Now, he'd like to meet their son. But "sonny" turns out to be charming, unaffected, 14-year-old Angela, played with fresh, appealing, unassuming unpretentiousness by Alison Lohman, who scored strongly last year in White Oleader as the beleaguered daughter of a woman behind bars.
Lohman's sweetness and simplicity captivates Roy (and probably will captivate you, too), so much so, that Roy begins thinking maybe he should get out of the life and take an honest job after pulling this one last big score. But, to his horror, he discovers that Angela is just as fast and adept at relieving the suckers of their money as he.
The give-and-take between Cage and Lohman is flirtatiously sweet as he tries to win her affections while trying to play the parent. He doesn't have a leg to stand on in that department, of course, but it's amusing when he tries to turn her away from a life of swindling.
It's not all fun and games, however. A breathtaking highlight is when a scam goes dreadfully wrong and the mood turns from playful to terrifying. Matchstick Men starts out on a deceptively breezy mood with a soundtrack heavy on swingy Sinatra tunes, then veers suddenly and scarily into darker territory. Like Roy's clients, you won't realize you've been had until it's over.
****
Matchstick Men
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Alison Lohman, Bruce Altman, Bruce McGill.
Rated: PG-13, contains violence, profanity, adult themes.
ARTICLE TOOLS: 
