De Palma pulls out new thriller in 'Snake Eyes'
By Tam Notosusanto
JAKARTA (JP): Is there anything that Brian De Palma hasn't done? He's done gangster movies (Scarface, Carlito's Way, both starring Al Pacino), a satirical comedy (The Bonfire of the Vanities), a Vietnam war drama (Casualties of War), big-screen versions of 1960s TV series (The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible), even a big-budget Hollywood action extravaganza (Mission: Impossible again).
But all movie buffs, including De Palma himself, must admit, his metier is really suspense thrillers. His body of work consists mostly of movies that chill and thrill, from his classics (Carrie, Dressed to Kill), to the so-so (The Fury, Blowout), to the mediocre (Raising Cain).
De Palma returns to this familiar territory with Snake Eyes. A claustrophobic action-thriller in the league of Black Sunday and Two-Minute Warning, it is a story of an assassination, a conspiracy and of a cop who happens to be in the wrong place at the right time.
That cop is Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage), an off-duty police officer who just wants to watch his favorite heavyweight champ, Lincoln Tyler (Stan Shaw) defend his title in a multimillion dollar fight broadcast live on cable TV.
His night is ruined when Charles Kirkland (Joel Fabiani), the U.S. Secretary of Defense, who is also among the audience, is assassinated by an invisible sniper in chaotic circumstance just a few meters from where Santoro was sitting.
Santoro transforms from rowdy boxing fan to authoritative officer-in-charge as he shuts the entire Atlantic City boxing arena/casino complex belonging to billionaire Gilbert Powell (John Heard), keeping the 14,000 spectators -- each one a murder suspect -- from fleeing the place.
Collaborating with his good friend, Major Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise), who has failed in his duty to guard the secretary, they roam the whole area in search of the killer.
De Palma presents a taut, nightmarish world of deception and paranoia as Santoro edges closer to the truth. Aided by Stephen H. Burum's energetic camera work, the director zaps us all over the place.
At the beginning of the movie, the long tracking shot has us following Santoro as he saunters through the mazelike arena and its surroundings, familiarizing us with the scene of the crime. Later, wild pans and stilted shots puts us right in the middle of the chaotic ringside area, and plunges us into the melee caused by the assassination.
Ostensibly, we know what we are about to see. Minutes before the shooting, Dunne, who is sitting next to Santoro, in front of the secretary, is distracted by a suspicious woman sitting nearby and runs after her. A mysterious blonde comes along and promptly takes his place, and spends some seconds whispering to the secretary. In the ring, Tyler is unexpectedly knocked out by his opponent, causing an uproar. And that's when the murder occurs.
De Palma plays around with our curiosity and confusion. Who is the blonde? What is she doing with the secretary? Why does Dunne leave his post? Are these all coincidences or orchestrated moves? Just like the movie tagline says, "Believe everything except your eyes," nothing is what it seems.
The film then imitates Kurusawa's Rashomon, as Santoro interviews Tyler, Dunne, and Julia Costello (Carla Gugino), the "mysterious blonde" he eventually discovers. The three provide three accounts of the assassination, which we see in flashbacks, and they contradict each other. Before Santoro knows it, he becomes entangled in a web of lies and cover-ups that even endangers his own life.
Snake Eyes takes us on an exciting ride of investigation and manipulation. It is exhilarating as De Palma carries us through his vision, using surveillance cameras, video playbacks, and one particular voyeuristic segment where the camera slowly floats in the air, peeking through several hotel rooms and their inhabitants. However, the screenplay, by David Koepp (Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park, The Lost World), fails to deliver. It manages to keep us on the edge of our seats in the first hour. But, once the face of the murder mastermind is revealed too soon, the movie loses its strength, and crawls hopelessly to its unsatisfying, cop-out climax. This picture is no contest for No Way Out, the Kevin Costner flick which has a similar setup but keeps its suspense and excitement intact until the very end.
The picture doesn't boast extraordinary acting, either. Even though Koepp makes the commendable choice of creating an antihero out of his main character, Nicolas Cage puts too much effort into portraying the loud, corrupt Santoro whose sole aim in solving the crime is career promotion. He is never really convincing, save for a scene where his character learns how he has been deceived and manipulated, and Cage delivers his best ever broken- down interpretation.
Meanwhile, don't expect much from Gary Sinise. You can find his best work in HBO features like Truman and George Wallace, for which he won a Golden Globe and an Emmy respectively. But here there is not much he can do with a role that is a flatly written second banana.