On M List of Movie Reviews
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Matchstick Men (2003)
Rate:
3
Viewed:
5/26
5/26:
After seeing Matchstick Men, I can understand why it tanked at the box office.
Somebody should've told Ridley Scott that Peter Bogdanovich was there first with
Paper Moon. Really, Matchstick Men has no story but is rather a
hodgepodge. The editing is awful at times. Yeah, the last twenty minutes is supposed to make me exclaim,
"Wow, what a twist!" But the truth is: the movie is nearly two hours long, rarely going anywhere during the
first half. I hate the characters and the idea of them scamming others.
Nicolas Cage is okay, but the OCD behavior (talk about beating a dead horse after Jack Nicholson's
Oscar win for As Good as It Gets) he's supposed to put on is very inconsistent. For
the longest time, his eye doesn't twitch. Earlier, he was counting numbers in different foreign languages, so
what happened to that routine? Having Bruce Altman on board as his therapist is helpful, yet the subplot
lacks substance.
Sam Rockwell is blah. Beating him by a mile is Alison Lohman who's so fucking
annoying that I wanted to throw a brick on the screen whenever she showed up. In other words, Alison Lohman is no
Tatum O'Neil. The latter was a gifted actress at 8 to 9 years old. But the former, who was 23 playing a girl
almost ten years younger, has "untalented" written all over her face. Unsurprisingly, Alison Lohman's career
went south afterwards with the last film credit in 2016.
All in all, Paper Moon is a masterpiece while Matchstick Men is
a plotless exercise of arrogance.