August 6–13, 1998

movie shorts

Snake Eyes

Directed by Brian De Palma

A Paramount Pictures release

by Sam Adams

With each movie he makes lately, Brian De Palma seems to be getting younger—and that's not meant as a compliment. His astonishing command of the camera, the skill with which he plays visual layers off each other, once yielded more than empty flourishes, but now it's just a gimmick with which he gussies up his commercial entertainments. In Blow Out (1981), De Palma's masterpiece, John Travolta's obsession with recording (the character is a sound man) traps him in a world of voyeuristic obsession. With the movie's last scene, De Palma brilliantly takes Vertigo one step further; where Jimmy Stewart failed to realize his own fantasies, Travolta gets what he's looking for, and ends up much the worse for it.

With Mission: Impossible and now Snake Eyes, De Palma seems like a novice fresh out of film school, obsessed with all the cool tricks he knows but too busy setting up crane shots to think about what they might mean. He's like a kid who's seen Blow Out but didn't understand it.

Nicolas Cage stars as an Atlantic City detective who accidentally uncovers a conspiracy when the secretary of Defense is assassinated during a high-stakes boxing match. Where Hitchcock's heroes-by-default were innocents, De Palma's are lowlifes, and true to form, Cage is a corrupt, smooth-talking womanizer who spends the movie's first 15 minutes juggling cell phone calls between his wife and his mistress.

After the breathtaking quarter-hour Steadicam shot that precedes the first gunshot, the plot spools out as Cage tromps 'round the Trump-like arena, tracking down leads like an excitable puppy. For all his superficial cool, you can tell he's juiced up by the magnitude of the case. As witnesses recall the events leading up to the shooting, the camera plays back their version of events, often from their point of view. This makes for some great tricks, of course, including one where we adopt a boxer's POV just in time to watch a glove smash into the lens. But while the camera hijinks and Cage's surprisingly engaging performance draw you in for a good hour, once it comes time to stack things up and start figuring out whodunit, the movie goes down like a glass-jawed featherweight.

Much of the blame goes to writer David Koepp, who should really be encouraged to complete his scripts before he submits them. On the evidence of Snake Eyes, Mission: Impossible, and the Jurassic Park twins, Koepp could use a few weeks at finishing school. But the fault really lies with De Palma, who can no longer be bothered to make a whole movie—just enough pieces to fill up the running time. Snake Eyes, which only cracks the 90-minute mark because of an unnecessary epilogue, feels particularly slapdash.

It's a shame, because even though he plainly doesn't give a shit anymore, De Palma's still incapable of making a totally worthless movie. The computer-infiltration sequence in Mission: Impossible was no less exhilarating for being surrounded by two hours of crap, and there are many moments in Snake Eyes that make you wish they were in a better movie. Though Gary Sinise sleepwalks his way through the role of Cage's best friend—if you've seen Ransom, you know where his character's headed—Carla Gugino (seen on TV's Spin City) does an appealing turn as a femme fatale/damsel in distress. And that opening shot is a killer.

But despite all the devices thrown in to pump up the story—in addition to the assassination and the title fight, there's a hurricane and a megalomaniac casino owner—Snake Eyes can't engender any real sense of excitement. The only event worth noting here is a major American director continuing his spiral down the tubes.