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| Rating | R | ||||
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| Director | Brian de Palma | ||||
| Featuring | Gary Sinise, Carla Gugino | ||||
| Overall | Nick | Acting | Directing | Story | Charm |
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| This film is set in an Atlantic City arena and the neighboring casino on the night of a heavyweight boxing match. The Secretary of Defense is attending and his head of security, Navy Commander Kevin Dunne (Sinise), invites his best friend Detective Rick Santoro (Cage) to watch the fight from the front row. Santoro is a crooked cop who accepts payoffs from criminals and seems to only care about taking care of himself. As the fight is going on, Dunne goes off to pursue a suspicious woman with red hair and a blonde woman rushes up to take his seat and speak to the secretary. From the next seat over, Santoro sees that the blonde (Gugino) is threatening the secretary about something and trying to give him a manila envelope. Then one of the boxers is knocked out, the crowd goes wild, and in the frenzy the secretary is assassinated. As the gun goes off the blonde is shot in the arm and the wig falls off her head, revealing that she's really a brunette. Santoro sees the boxer who had been knocked out "miraculously" jerk back into consciousness at the sound of the gunshots. Dunne stands to be court-marshalled for having been out of position, and in order to save his friend Santoro takes over the investigation. As he begins to look into the case, Santoro realizes that the assassination was part of a conspiracy and his own cover-my-own-ass attitude is put to the test.
I like the plot of this film and I like the way it's presented. Much of the film is spent looking back on the initial sequence in which the Secretary is murdered from different perspectives, either through video recordings of the fight or through flashbacks by different people involved. The viewer doesn't pay attention to many of the things that occur in the initial sequence, only to realize later that they were major clues to what really happened. Most of the flashbacks are shot from the perspective of the person remembering them, as if you're looking through their eyes, which I think is an interesting and effective way of presenting the information. One of the problems I had with this film was that I didn't get the whole thing with Carla Gugino's character losing her glasses directly after the assassination. I don't quite see the purpose of having her run around for the rest of the film with everything looking blurry. I would guess that this was done to heighten the sense of her being lost, disoriented, and in need of help, but it really isn't developed enough to accomplish this. It should have either been used better or cut out. The other issue I had with this film was mostly with the film's ending, which wasn't too too bad but was a little confusing to me. I can't get specific without giving the ending away, but it happened really fast and seemed to be a little too convenient and unlikely. Despite the ending, I liked this film. It's got a good story filled with twists and turns, an interesting perspective, and solid performances by all the actors. I particularly liked Cage's portrayal of a rather complicated character who is caught between what's right and what's easy. | |||||
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