I am not a Nicholas Cage fan by any means, though some of his roles occasionally do stand out as nothing less than classic. 8mm, Leaving Las Vegas...Snake Eyes is certainly not one of them. This movie is slow and drawn out and not even the acting of Gary Sinise or the musical score of legendary Japanese producer Ryuichi Sakamoto can save this mess. Cage plays the ultra-annoying Rick Santoro, a detective in Atlantic City who suddenly finds himself trying to solve a murder during a fixed boxing match. Typical Brian DePalma stuff, which means it's only decent at best. It could've been better.
I have tried to watch this movie two times, but everytime I do. I stop watching it. Its boring and long. Nicolas Cage is a great actor, but this is not one of his best.
Form is content. It's fun, the opening shot has to be seen to be believed, and there is enough of a story to allow for De Palma to test the limits of his camera. Remarkably, it never feels self-indulgent.
I enjoy watching this movie. One aspect about this story that I never see mentioned that for the main charactersm there really isn't a strong distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. It's all circumstantial, which I think is closer to real life.
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate how the killer is revealed in this movie. They reveal him right in the middle of the film, not at the end and the ending is so stupid and over the top and for what reason exactly? This film is more about a director showing off how cool he can direct a scene from soooo many points of view. It's utter crap.
depalma, pillages hitchcock once again, in style and plot, as we see nicholas cage play a atlantic city cop, who while not an honest cop, has to protect a witness, when she is involved in a assassination atempt, at a sporting arena, holding a boxing fight, its up to cage ro join the dots and proe who may or not be involved in the crime from the peize fighter, who may have taken a dive to various goverment men on the scene, one played by gary sinise, who is on the case with cage, can they work together to solve the crime, and with a hurricaine raging outside and thousands of witnesses to process its gonna be a long night, as i said depalma is a big fsan of hitchcock, and all the tricks come out here, and my favourate is his opening shot, all done in one take, introducing all the charactors, with a great steadycam, almost as good as his own done in carlitoes way, good over the top performances all round, cage his manic self, sinise reliable as ever and the georgous carla gugino as the dame in distress, although the film does run out of steam towords the end, it does get a bit stupid, it is quite solid up till then, not depalmas best, but pretty good
Starts well....and about halfway the whole thing colapses in one of the messiest ways i have seen in any film to date. At least it introduced me to Carla Gugino too, who is a very fine piece of female anatomy.
Pretty good movie. I like it because my Aunt did the lighting on it. It's definitely an interesting political thriller but the ending was a little rough. It was building great and then the ending felt kind of half assed. Could have been better. Still the point of view shots were cool.
One of the worst movies ever. Brian DePalma, why? I don't enjoy movies where the "hero" gets the crap kicke out of him so much that you know he's not gonna recover and something else is going to save the day. And that's exactly what happened. Crap, crap, crap.
Not as good as everyone got me to believe. You could see how it would end before the shooting acctually took place in the movie. I'm not watching to be able to predict hence the low rating.
starts of really good Nicholas cage just being halrious and awesome kind of slows down during the rest but still the story is good and keeps you interested. Would of been better with a better ending.
The far-fetched story features Nicolas Cage as a crooked police detective attending a championship boxing match at which the Secretary of Defense is assassinated. The unfortunate Secretary's right-hand man (Gary Sinise) happens to be Cage's old friend, a fact that complicates the cop's efforts to reconstruct the crime from conflicting accounts--a directorial strategy bearing similarities to Kurosawa's Rashomon. The outrageousness of the scenario essentially gives De Palma permission to construct a baroque cathedral of spectacular camera stunts, which (he well knows) are inevitably more interesting than the hoary conspiracy plot. (The opening scene alone, which runs on for a number of minutes and consists of one, unbroken shot that moves in from the street, following Cage up and down stairs, and in and out of rooms until finally ending ringside at the match, is breathtaking.) The shifting points of view--based on the contradictory statements of witnesses--also give De Palma license to get creative with camera angles and scene rearrangements. [awesome movie] one that i would recommend to see.
This mystery/thriller by Brian De Palma starts of very well with its terrific long one-take shot and its intriguing premise, which had me hooked from the beginning. Sadly as the film progressed along it became really predicable, slightly dull and very silly (which is a shame because the script was written by David Koepp of all people). Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise and Carla Gugino were fine and the De Palma's direction is as stylish as always but it could have been so much better than it was, it could have been a great call back to his earlier Hitchcock-esque films. It's watchable but don't expect any surprises though.
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