Matchstick Men.

[TheShinje]

I just watched this movie today and I thought it was a cool flick, well, for the most part.

It stars Nicholas Cage as Roy Waller a phobic con artist, who is on a potentially lucrative job, when his teenage daughter, Angela (Alison Lohman) shows up unexpectedly.

It startsd out pretty good, Roy is obsessive compulsive, and he has a routine, which Angela disrupts. Nicholas Cage does play this role very well and he is believeable in the role which contriubutes to it's sucess. The way Roy is so meticulous about being clean and how [spoiler] he spend two days cleaning his house[/spoiler] shows a light funny side while also not making fun, we laugh, but are still sympathetic to Roy, who can't help it since [spoiler] his dealer, who gets him these drugs skips town, he gets them illegaly so he doesn't have to speak to a shrink. It's throught this dealing that Roy finds out about angela.[/spoiler]\

The heist scene is pretty good too, but after the major scene things go from good film, to crap film.

[spoiler] During the movie, you see Roy continue to go to the same checkout lady at the supermarket, even if the line is longer, as Angela poijnts out, turns out that this is in fact, "angela's" mother, who miscarried their child. Roy, being seperated after the first two months of pregnancy did not know this.

Angela is not his daughter! This is what I gather from it as they are very distant so it seems at the end when he is a carpet salesman, woop! a big twist! :rolleyes: It seems like a lame futile attempt to pull off a "Matrix Reloaded ending" Ruined the whole movie, well not the wole movie, Alison Lohman was exceptionally great in the supporting role, since she played a fourteen year old and she is actually 24. She does the part of the 14 year old Angela so well, it's easy to overlook the horribly crap ending and remember the films bes parts, being the entir movie up until the last 20 minutes. [/spoiler]


Great movie, crap ending.

[Charles]

[spoiler] I don't see how the ending is like Matrix Reloaded at all. Faulty analogy. That ending served as a cliffhanger to garner excitement for the next film. The twist in Matchstick Men was contrived. It wasn't used to build a plot. Rather, it was meant to provoke shock value and add extra Intelligent Brand Spackle to the film.

Unfortunately, it seemed desperate and forced. Almost as if it was supposed to validate the terrible things the characters had done and somehow give them redemption.

While the twist was clever to a certain extent, its overall artificiality detracted from the film significantly. We didn't need Ocean's Eleven here.

I had liked the idea of a troubled man trying to be a father and turning his life around. They should have just kept on that route. The potential for a much more powerful film will forever lie down that road unexplored.[/spoiler]

[Genkai]

*shrugs* I liked it. I thought it was well thought out, though I haven;t read the book... It was probably better.

The realy reason I liked it was because the girl was pretty attractive..*shrugs*