Director Brian De Palma is one of the most stylistic directors working in film today. With an impressive body of work ranging from suspense thrillers such as "Blow Out" and "Body Double" to horror films like "Carrie" and gangster pictures such as "Carlito's Way" and "The Untouchables," De Palma has a unique visual style that's left indelible impressions on the minds of moviegoers worldwide.
Who will ever forget the shower scene from "Dressed To Kill," the hand from the grave image in "Carrie," the scene from "Mission Impossible" where Tom Cruise hangs from the ceiling in a highly secured room, or the baby carriage on the train station staircase sequence from "The Untouchables?" Despite such memorable moments and many more, this highly acclaimed director has his detractors, however, who accuse him of lifting scenes and his overall style from other directors and films.
There's that baby carriage scene from "The Untouchables" that resembles a similar scene from the classic Russian film, "Battleship Potemkin," and many thought "Body Double" was a rip off of Hitchcock's "Rear Window." The accusations go on, but no matter what you think of him, there's no denying that De Palma knows how to grab the audience's attention and not let go.
All of which brings us to his latest film, "Snake Eyes," a murder mystery partially told in flashback from the individual viewpoints of several key witnesses. Although not a great film for reasons I'll disclose in a moment, the film does have some imaginatively shot scenes. First, there's an early, nonstop sequence that lasts fifteen to twenty minutes and contains no edits.
Similar to the one from "The Player" and Hitchcock's "Rope," the scene is an amazing thing to behold, not only for the technical aspects, but also because it effectively and simultaneously introduces a great deal of exposition Considering the logistics and timing that had to be perfect to pull off such a feat, De Palma and his longtime cinematographer, Stephen Burum ("Mission Impossible," "The Untouchables"), deserve kudos for their effort, as does actor Nicolas Cage for being able to deliver his lines amidst the technical choreography.
Then there's Burum's overhead shot that slowly travels above a cross-section of a hotel floor where we peer into room after room as if looking down onto a maze filled with laboratory rats. An interesting observational technique, the shot eventually gets us to our focal point of action in a way that's much more visually interesting than simply going down the hotel hallway. Beyond those scenes and many more, De Palma has also infused the picture with his standard split screen shots where he shows us several important scenes simultaneously unfolding before our eyes.
Such material is fun and interesting to watch and that -- and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto's score - - are highly reminiscent of classic thrillers from half a century ago. Nevertheless, such moments can't stand alone and need a decent movie to support them. While the film isn't horrible by any means, the sum of its parts is definitely lesser than them standing alone. Although the film's premise is initially quite intriguing, it takes a wrong turn by letting the cat out of the bag -- so to speak -- way too soon, and suffers from other inadequacies that diffuse its overall effect.
Playing out somewhat like De Palma's highly underrated thriller, "Blow Out" (with John Travolta in his first stardom phase), this film features another political assassination where one character attempts to unravel the truth via audio/visual aides and a key witness he must protect. Although clearly not as clever or effective as that film (that used incomplete audio and later film footage of the murder quite well), this film still manages to immediately grab our attention.
Since it's designed as a mystery where we and the main character don't know who the ringleader is, the fun for the audience is trying to figure out that answer. Especially after setting up the plot to show us different viewpoints of the crime, De Palma and screenwriter David Koepp ("Jurassic Park," "Mission Impossible") provide a big let down by prematurely letting us know the villain's identity.
While that does give the audience superior position above the protagonist and thus ensures some suspenseful moments when the hero doesn't realize he's with the bad guy, it completely wrecks the mystery element. Thus, the film starts off in one genre (murder mystery) and ends up in another (suspense thriller).
Although those two are obviously interrelated, the film also suffers from an overall lack of genuine suspense, or more importantly, urgency. While individual scenes often excel at either or both of those elements, the film as a whole surprisingly never feels that exciting and eventually comes off more like watching two rats square off in that laboratory maze.
One never gets the feeling that Santoro is facing any sort of immediate deadline to solve the mystery and the film ultimately suffers from that temporal deficiency. Beyond that, the whole element of having 14,000 people holed up in the arena never amounts to much of anything, let alone the claustrophobic, near riot element it should have created.
All of that, when added to the premature unveiling of the villain's identity, never allows the picture to gain any momentum and race toward a hopefully surprising ending. It's interesting and certainly easy to watch, but it's not as good as I wished and thought it could have been. A tacked on, rushed (as in a series of temporally distant scenes edited closely together), and completely unnecessary denouement only further weakens the film's impact.
The performances are decent, but not outstanding. I've always enjoyed the work of Nicolas Cage ("City of Angels" and an Academy Award winner for "Leaving Las Vegas"), but his character here goes through an odd transformation midway through the picture. Initially he's a wildly flamboyant and corrupt guy, something of a mixture of Cage's characters from "Face/Off" and more vividly, "Kiss of Death."
Of course that makes him fun to watch, and Cage can easily pull off such characteristics. Interestingly though, about halfway into the movie he suddenly transforms into a morally correct and subdued "just the facts, ma'am" kind of character. While it's possible his earlier behavior was simply being excited about the fight and we understand the need to make him the hero by the story's end, the transformation is peculiar, but gradual enough that some may not be bothered by it. Even so, Cage is as fun to watch as ever.
Gary Sinise ("Apollo 13" and an Oscar nominee for "Forrest Gump") is good in his role, and while he doesn't play a likeable character, he certainly does a fine enough job portraying him. Carla Gugino ("Michael," "The War At Home") delivers a competent take as a nervous witness on the run, but her character isn't developed enough to allow her to do much with the part. The rest of the performances are okay, but nothing that will leave much of an impression on audiences.
Overall, the film is good, but not great. My biggest complaints focus on the film's overall lack of any feeling of urgency, the premature unveiling of the villain's identity, and the fact that the conspiracy -- once fully explained -- is rather run of the mill and doesn't offer many exciting elements that we haven't seen in scores of similarly based government murder stories.
Most important, however, is that for a murder mystery to really be effective, we need to believe that any number of characters may be the perpetrator and that twists and turns and characters double crossing each other will permeate the film, but little of that's to be found here.
In my opinion, De Palma has nearly always delivered high quality, extremely engrossing, and superior stylized films, most of which I've personally enjoyed. While he's again succeeded at delivering another visually engrossing and easy to watch film, it's unfortunate that equal attention wasn't applied to the plot to make it just as exciting. Decent, but not as good as it could -- and should -- have been, we give "Snake Eyes" a 6 out of 10.
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