Snake Eyes Grade: C+ 1998, 99 minutes, MPAA rated R Director: Brian De Palma
Cinema's biggest show-off has a grand time in Snake Eyes, a fairly straightforward (and largely uninspired) political-thriller plot enlivened (and cheapened) by its director's need to impress film students the world over.
Brian De Palma, whose work I generally abhor, takes a standard story and pumps it up with a perspective-shifting treatment, only to hurt the work by not knowing when to stop his gimmicks and, finally, not having enough material to sustain the movie.
At a high-profile fight in Atlantic City, the Secretary of Defense is assassinated not three feet from corrupt cop Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage), who dives into the case blindly, not realizing how fully it will entrap him.
The single, extraordinary shot that sets up the film, running at least ten minutes, descends into beautifully orchestrated chaos as the camera follows Santoro through the arena, placing bets, shaking down drug dealers, talking on his gold cell phone, and watching the main event, ending with gunfire just after his fighter goes down. What sets
Santoro off is the boxer's reaction. He's just been knocked out, but when shots ring out, his eyes snap open. Santoro thinks the hulk threw the fight and approaches him.
The boxer's narrative (shown literally through his eyes, a technique that is fun, interesting, confusing, and irritating all at the same time) sets the cop on the trail of his best friend, Major Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise), who set up security for the bout. The case actually involves little police work, though, as the boxer and a mysterious woman (Carla Gugino) tell Santoro all he needs to know, and security cameras back up their stories. The simplicity of the case affords De Palma the opportunity to show the same ten minutes that opened the movie from several characters' perspectives. Those sequences have a nice kick to them, and make it easy to forget how pedestrian the story is.
But De Palma achieves a strange goal of film direction here, in which the means are not nearly as important as the end. The images of Snake Eyes are themselves not terribly exciting or interesting. The artistry comes from the pains the director took to capture them, and only people who love the craft of making movies will properly appreciate the work involved.
In its last half hour, too, the movie settles into a bland drama, with Santoro and Dunne facing off. It seems that once De Palma has dispensed with his tricks, he simply wants to tie up the plot and theme loose ends. Will Santoro turn in his best friend? Or will he take the money and turn his head, the way he always has?
In another movie, these questions might have generated some interest. But with all the style of Snake Eyes' first hour, the end is disappointing and dull.
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Review by Jeff Ignatius. jsign@fgi.net
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