Snake Eyes
with Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise, Carla Gugino, John Heard, Stan Shaw
Directed by Brian De Palma
Written by Brian De Palma, David Koepp
by Scott Hefflon
Only fatalistic determination, a full bottle of Captain Morgan’s, and lack of anything better to do kept me from flushing this stinkbomb halfway through. And to think the quick-cutting trailers ruled, and the first scene was almost tiring it was so jam-packed with manic energy. But even a bleary-eyed viewer with chemically-lessened standards could easily spot annoyingly wild coincidences, not to mention the creeping feeling of, “Waitaminute… Oh screw it. Who gives a shit anyway?”
Opening with a romp through a Las Vegas coliseum showing arrogant, corrupt cop Rick Santoro (Cage) as he rambles madly on a cell phone, barges backstage, beats someone up, and hits on the woman sitting next to him, this scene has been compared to GoodFellas, and with good reason. Similar, in a way, to the opening scene of The Paper – writer David Koepp was onboard for both – only instead of following conversations, Snake Eyes follows a man who’s strutting through situations and conversations. Santoro, who is friends with the head of security (Sinese), is seated next to a conspiratorial, wig-wearing woman (a computer programmer or something, not that it much matters even though that is, I think, the plot), and in front of a US Senator. The Senator gets shot, the woman disappears into the casino part of the hotel, and chaos ensues. And while the rest of the movie throws clues and plot twists at you until you’re really not sure what actually happened, the more things change, the less you have invested in any of the characters. You end up not caring about someone who got shot for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and all you care about is the fact that it’s solved so the forcefully-detained audience of the coliseum can go home, and so can you. By the climactic ending, I was praying for the credits to roll and wondering if there might not be a better informercial on basic cable.
