Matchstick Men

I borrowed this film from Eric more than a year ago and never managed to get around to watching it until this past week.

This movie, for me, falls into the same category as The Sixth Sense - good for watching once but it loses something the second time around. Both movies are designed around being a single view movie. But that is fine, we need movies like that too. The downside to this being: it is a poor movie investment for someone looking to add it to their collection. You just are not going to get the value out of it.

Nicholas Cage does a very good job in this film and I feel that it pushed him as an actor a bit more than most of his films. The plot is decently interesting and original although it does lend itself to some predictability by the end of the movie. My biggest problem with this movie was that there was a lot left unexplained by the end of the film. I cannot go into any significant detail without giving away too much of the plot, but by the end of the film, if you think carefully about all of the events that happened during the film, you will find yourself with many unanswered questions. Much like a murder mystery where the on-screen detective is keeping a critical piece of evidence hidden from the audience, this movie gives the audience no clear way to have guessed the true meaning of the movie's events because they were not clearly thought out and are portrayed, often, in contradiction to the way they would have happened if the film makers were not intentionally trying to mislead the viewers.

So, while this film was enjoyable, it was not an outstanding film by any stretch of the imagination. If filmakers wish to make movies with twists in them, they need to realize that they are often creating these movies for literate audiences that really do notice the nuances of the films. Perhaps filmakers should spend some time watching their own films attempting to "get into the films" themselves to see if their films manage to maintain internal consistency before releasing them to the public.