Cage gives con-man role heart in 'Matchstick Men'

By Marshall Fine
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

MATCHSTICK MEN (Rated PG-13) Three-and-one-half stars (Good-to-Excellent). A con-man movie with a heart, in which Nicolas Cage plays a phobic grifter who discovers that he has a teenage daughter he never knew about. Starring Nicolas Cage, Alison Lohman, Sam Rockwell. Directed by Ridley Scott. Warner Bros. 120 minutes.

He's at his best when he's on the grift, inspiring trust with seductive self-assurance. Off the job, however, he's a mess, a bundle of obsessive-compulsive tics and rituals who gives off involuntary little whoops when the stress starts getting to him.

And everything stresses him: Among other things, he's agoraphobic and a neat freak. Which means he is afraid to go outdoors and compulsive about hygiene.

In "Matchstick Men," an uncharacteristically light-hearted film by Ridley Scott, Roy's worlds collide when he discovers he has a teenage daughter he's never met. Even as he's setting up the biggest score of his career, he's forced into a role of parental responsibility, though he can barely take care of himself.

Based on a novel by Eric Garcia, "Matchstick Men" is about trust and deceit. But it's also the story of a man who has spent his adult life avoiding connection and intimacy. He practices a passive-aggressive approach to his trade, asserting, "I don't steal. They give it to me."

When a psychoanalyst (Bruce Altman) tracks down his teenaged daughter, Roy's life changes.

But the arrival of Angela (Alison Lohman) on his doorstep upsets the balance of Roy's hermetically sealed life. She forces him to think differently about himself and about what he does — particularly when she starts expressing an interest in the family trade.

Roy, unused to the company of adolescents, is shocked that his unseemly profession might rub off on his offspring (but flattered that she thinks what he does is cool, a state he apparently stopped trying to aspire to years earlier). He also recognizes her potential, which could be applied to the con that he's running with his ambitious young partner Frank (Sam Rockwell) on a businessman (Bruce McCall).

Cage was in danger of using up all the independent-film credibility he had accrued leading up to wining the Oscar for "Leaving Las Vegas." Since then, he seems to have confined himself to big-budget action films and comedies, few of which seemed worthy of his talents.

But with "Adaptation" last year and now "Matchstick Men," Cage has returned to the kind of film that's more focused on character than plot, though this film is a glossy marvel of misdirection and surprises.

Cage and Lohman have a striking chemistry: she, with the cusp-like balancing act between being child and woman; he, capturing Roy's unexpected wells of feeling for another person after years of loneliness. Rockwell ("Confessions of a Dangerous Mind") adds punch as Roy's partner, who must work around Roy's quirks to take advantage of his skills in the con game.

"Matchstick Men" is a stylish exercise, as one would expect from Scott ("Gladiator," Hannibal," and "Black Hawk Down") and is done with a much lighter touch than Scott usually applies. It's an unexpectedly breezy tale, one that will surprise you with its heart.

Rated PG-13, profanity, violence and adult themes.