For our second installment of 12 Days of Cage-mas, Margaux and I took a look at Snake Eyes, which was a hell of a lot more fun than the last movie we watched.
Trevor: I think it’s safe to say that Snake Eyes was much more in line with the kind of Nicolas Cage film we were looking for. As soon as he walks into frame – and that’s pretty much what he does, as if he was just milling around the set and found himself in front of a camera – he’s acting like a goddamn lunatic, and for 98 minutes I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Nor did I want to.
Margaux: From moment one, when he bursts on screen to loudly pronounce he’s Rick Santoro, or Ricky for short, you knew you were in for a prime Nic Cage performance. He made Snake Eyes after The Rock, and to be honest, it fits in perfectly with Con Air and Face/Off. To borrow from Stefon, it has everything. Insane hairline, a shirt that’d make Guy Fieri jealous, crooked government officials, and a fucking conspiracy so convoluted you wonder how any of the people involved have a day job. His turn as Rick Santoro can be summed up justly: “COCAINE MY ASS.”
Trevor: feel like he won the Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas, said “DONE,” and proceeded to lose his mind. I think the 1990s were the decade of prime Cage, between this and all the other movies you mentioned.
And I think what helped Snake Eyes so much is that Brian de Palma actually knows how to frame Cage. He’s not trying to rein in either his star or his cinematographer; I think they both showed up, de Palma sat them down, and told them, “Do whatever you want.” And weirdly enough, it works. The shot of Cage beating up Luis Guzman is absolutely nuts, but works within the confines of the film. Like all great conspiracy thrillers -and Snake Eyes isn’t a “classic movie,” but it’s enjoyable nonetheless – the logic only has to make sense in the film, not in real life. It’s one of those mysteries, like Inherent Vice, where you’re not necessarily supposed to follow the twists and turns, because if you left for the bathroom and came back to see Carla Gugino talking about missiles, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d missed like twenty minutes.
Margaux: The first ten minutes felt like taking a walk inside Nic Cage’s spastic brain. The quick cuts, the fast walk-and-talks down long, winding hallways – that had dusting of Sorkin – but you were smacked with how terribly 90s the whole thing felt. Right down to Carla Gugino’s sexy scientist who knows too much. When Gary Sinise introduces the films Chekhov’s Gun (although, I guess it could be debated), the prototype to a Magellan GPS tracker, I thought he was trying to take a selfie. But when they cut to the reverse and you see the retro graphic, and overhear their giddiness over the “technology,” you remember how dated this movie is. The 90s obsession with “the future.”
This also came out around the time when everyone was trying their hand at a version of Pulp Fiction, and as Snake Eyes unfolded, I couldn’t help but notice some…let’s call them homages. Did you pick up on that? It wasn’t just the boxing match setting, it was also the different character perspectives – which were accomplished with varying degrees of success.
Trevor: I mainly noticed Gugino’s Mia Wallace-style white shirt/black hair/blood ensemble. The POV shots didn’t do it for me, but I don’t like POV shots period, so that’s not surprising. De Palma is a shameless imitator of Alfred Hitchcock, and in its best scenes Snake Eyes seems like a pulpy ‘80s riff on North by Northwest or Strangers on a Train. If Hitchcock made this you would have had Cary Grant in the Cage role and James Mason in the Sinise role.
(By the way, I find it hilarious that Sinise’s character is named Kevin Dunne, and there’s an actor named Kevin Dunn in the cast.)
Margaux: Should we discuss the finer points of the plot/five-person conspiracy before we get in too much further? IMDB describes Snake Eyes thusly: a shady police detective finds himself in the middle of a murder conspiracy at an important boxing match in Atlantic City casino. I mean, sure. Kind of oversimplifying it a touch.
Trevor: I mean, that’s not untrue, but it doesn’t get to the core of how crazy Snake Eyes is. I actually really like the 24-hour framing device, and the way de Palma shoots the arena is actually somehow claustrophobic. The military conspiracy comes out of nowhere, to be sure, and a tighter screenplay would have graduated to that easier, but I like to think that David Koepp knew Cage was going to play Rick Santoro and decided that logic could be thrown out the window. As it is, the conspiracy does come kind of out of nowhere – I remember a reaction of “Wait, what?” – but at that point you’re just kind of used to rolling with Cage’s lunacy, so it…kinda works?
Margaux: I definitely laughed when Cage and Sinise are going over the clues they’ve gathered in that war room (what arena/casino has that conference room??) and Cage suddenly comes to the conclusion that “five people make a conspiracy!” You know, that old rule of five. It was so hammy and outright silly.
My main complaint is the audience got too much information up front, which sort of drained the tension; I actually liked trying to figure it out with Cage. And the third act took FOREVER and a day, and ended…awkwardly. I mean, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about the closing credits rolling over stock footage of construction workers pouring cement for DAYS. Um, WUT. Honestly, what was that?
Trevor: Yeah, for sure Snake Eyes is imperfect, and it would have worked better if it just coasted on Cage’s intensity. The moments of ACTING didn’t land as well as they should, even though Cage and Sinise are both good actors (he said without laughing). De Palma loses his grasp on the narrative thread as soon as the military conspiracy is introduced, which is a shame, because so much of Snake Eyes is so enjoyable. As soon as Cage started randomly modulating the volume of his voice, I was in.
Margaux: Or Carla Gugino wandering the casino in her all white outfit that’s covered in blood and NO ONE SAYS A DAMN THING.
I don’t know why the man who’s assassinated needed to be Secretary of Defense, it didn’t do anything other than muddy the waters. It was interesting enough with the boxing angle, the guy who played the boxer Lincoln Tyler was really good and his emotions over feeling his hand was forced into throwing the fight and tarnishing his legacy, why couldn’t it have been the mob instead of the government?
Trevor: I agree, that would have made things a lot clearer, and to use boxing terms, Snake Eyes is punching a bit above its weight class with the military stuff. And if the film had stuck with the boxing angle, we could have gotten more truly insane scenes like Rick interrogating Lincoln Tyler. I honestly wonder what it’s like to act opposite Cage – do you ever know how he’s going to react to something?
Margaux: According to Paul Scheer, who co-starred in Army of One with Cage, he’s professional, but intense. It brings to mind that Tropic Thunder quote, “I don’t drop character till the DVD commentary.” I think that’s Cage’s actor secret.
Trevor: Also, the scene where Tyler beats up Rick is actually pretty dark and affecting. Well done, movie.
Margaux: I mean, they say the title of the movie, twice, so you know it’s good.
Do you want to try to unpack this conspiracy? It’s sort of background noise, and I’m still not entirely sure what stake Mr. Belding had in missiles, but still. Wanna take a crack?
Trevor: Oh God no. I know missiles were involved, and Sinise was morally compromised but not entirely a bad guy, like Ed Harris in The Rock. But you’re right to describe the conspiracy as background noise. The movie doesn’t seem overly interested, although if I’m being honest I like the idea of a murder thriller escalating to a full-blown conspiracy thriller. Snake Eyes doesn’t quite pull it off, but I give it some points for trying.
Margaux: It pulls off a full-blown Cage performance, whether that’s intentional or not, I cannot tell.
Towards the end, they bring back the hurricane introduced in the cold open (if you can even call it that), and that’s when it started to feel very, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink. You have Cage groaning, spitting, limping to the storage locker he left Gugino in, but the hard rain knocked off the casino emblem and was banging against the siding and left a weak spot. Somewhere around third lightning strike, and Cage sees the outline of the gun, but grunts further regardless, I was secretly hoping Sinise would just shoot him already. It was all too much, the point was sort of lost, not every thread needs revisiting.
Trevor: Yeah, absolutely, the rain storm (and subsequent reporting by Law & Order: SVU’s ME Warner) didn’t really help the plot, but it did effectively trap everyone inside, but they were already trapped inside because the cops wouldn’t let anyone leave? I talked myself out of this real quick.
Margaux: Yeah, did they get 14,000 peoples’ photo and address? How long would that take? Did they just give up?
Trevor: I don’t know, but it did lead to a solid Cage breakdown, so there’s the silver lining to that abandoned plot thread.
Margaux: The ending was out-and-out insanity, there’s no way in real life Sinise would’ve not gotten shot tens of times for waving around that gun like he did. Sarah Paulson’s character on American Horror Story got shot for less. Ah, the 90s.
Margaux: It was kind of hilarious in a dark, fucked up way that Cage’s last words to the man he described earlier in the film as, “the most honorable dude ever” were “snake eyes.” Then he killed himself.
Trevor: At that point, it was the only way the movie could end.
Margaux: BUT IT DIDN’T! It went on for ten more fucking unnecessary minutes.
Trevor: Yeah, but I don’t think either of us was paying attention to that, really.
Overall, I liked Snake Eyes a lot more than The Runner, because even if it was a fucking mess a lot of the times, it never really lost my attention, and Cage had a lot more verve and life in his performance. This…this is the good shit.
Margaux: On a scale of: good movie, bad movie, or movie I kind of liked – I’d say Snake Eyes is a movie I kind of liked. Strange epilogue aside, it was a fun, snappy and a little bit pulpy thriller. And it cannot be overstated how peak Cage Rick Santoro is. It could almost replace The Rock, in the unofficial trilogy of prime Cage-ian movies alongside Con Air, and Face/Off.
Next up: appropriately enough, Next
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