"That's fourteen thousand eyewitnesses!!"      

SNAKE EYES (R) 

Reviewed August 11, 1998 - Check out the Snake Eyes Website.

In Snake Eyes, Brian DePalma's latest directorial effort, Nicolas Cage stars as Atlantic City Police Detective Nick Santoro. A flambuoyant and slightly less than honest cop, Santoro struts around as if he owns the town, working the city's seedy underbelly with wide-eyed energy and lots of attitude.

Tonight Santoro's got front row seats at a heavyweight fight, invited to the event by his best friend Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise), the chief of security for the Secretary of Defense (Joel Fabiani) who is also at the fight. The crowd is wild and so is Santoro as the opening bell sounds...Dunne notices one suspicious woman in the crowd and approaches her...then another mysterious woman sits next to Santoro, handing the Secretary of Defense a small package. All of a sudden the champ is knocked down...then there's a gunshot...and another.

Pandemonium breaks out at this point, but the end result is that you have one dead Secretary of Defense, two mysterious women who quickly disappear, and Santoro and Dunne left to piece the case together.

For the sake of not revealing Snake Eyes' entire plot, I won't go into any additional detail about what ensues, but will say that "plot" really isn't what this film is about. Instead, it's about Nicolas Cage in a typically "Cage-ian" over-the-top performance and DePalma in a typically "DePalmian" brand of filmmaking. The result? A film that is wonderfully entertaining and creative in parts, but also amazingly disappointing in others. Evidence for the former: a brilliantly choreographed 20-minute single-shot steadicam sequence to open the film. Evidence for the latter: the remainder of the film.

It's really too bad that Snake Eyes never develops the level of intensity that it needs in order to be a great film. Despite Cage's excellent performance, supporting performances by Gary Sinise and Carla Gugino (as the aforementioned second mysterious woman) are relatively flat, with Sinise in particular being incredibly stiff and unconvincing throughout the movie. Unfortunately, the plot also suffers from some imbalances, with certain elements (e.g. the inevitable romantic subplot) never ever getting off the ground. As with some other films in DePalma's stable (e.g. Mission: Impossible), Snake Eyes gives us a few effective and memorable sequences interspersed within an otherwise unremarkable film.

Responses from cyberspace--thanks for writing!

Sullivan Gray gives this movie  stars: "I found it to be much too predictable and agree with you about the side characters." (9/28/98)

andersch@eglin.af.mil gives this movie  stars: "awful!!" (9/23/98)

Sarah Angeli gives this movie  stars: "I think this was a great movie and needs more hype, not ratings saying that it is all that good. Cage was wonderful as always." (9/5/98)

Oz gives this movie  stars: "A great concept and creatively directed but lacking the most important ingredient. SUSPENCE!" (8/26/98)