Time is cruel to movie stars. Other than a timeless few like Meryl Streep or Denzel Washington, few actors manage to sustain careers at the very top of the food chain. Look at the recent IMDB entries of box-office stalwarts like Bruce Willis or Samuel L. Jackson; their recent resume is littered with straight to video releases and barely noticed bombs. So let's raise a glass to the fallen soldiers of recent Hollywood past. Hollywood has always been a young person's game, and time has never been more cruel than to its female stars.
In the late 90s and early 2000s there was no bigger movie star than Nicole Kidman. After a string of commercial hits, critical successes, and even an Oscar, Kidman has all but fallen off the Hollywood radar. Kidman was barely advertised in three of her most recent films, including a humiliating turn as Jennifer Aniston's second antagonist in Adam Sandler's 'Just Go With It'.
So it's with sadness that I watch her and Nicolas Cage slog through the ridiculousness of Joel Schumacher's 'Trespass'. 'Trespass' was released to theatres with such indifference and critical drubbing that it was ushered off to DVD a scant three weeks later. Schumacher too of course has seen better days. Once one of Hollywood's most reliable (if not artistically loved) directors, Schumacher was put at the helm of the Batman franchise. Since then Schumacher has been banished to the same Hollywood purgatory, who like Kidman, has seen his last three releases barely make a blip on the cinematic radar.
The premise of 'Trespass' is simple enough. Cage and Kidman are a married couple taken hostage after a home invasion. The thieves, knowing Cage is a diamond dealer, try and black mail him into opening the contents of his home safe. What plays out is an over-the-top, less brainy version of David Fincher's 'Panic Room'. But where 'Panic Room' played the film straight, Cage is determined to bring his manic, fly off the rails personality to the very forefront of the movie. Example? Upon learning that Kidman was having an illicit affair with one of the home invaders Cage screams at her 'Your filthy lust invited them in!'. Despite Cage's antics, Kidman carries herself with the usual weighty dignity. Despite the affects of time and needless plastic surgery, Kidman is still a magnetic screen presence, and Cage, especially when he's in his reckless, go-for-broke glory, is always immensely watchable.
The problem of course is with the film's flaccid story. Mostly a set-piece entirely contained within Cage's lavish mansion, the film quickly runs out of steam, running out of different permutations in which hidden character relationships are revealed, motivations explained through clumsy exposition, and pointless twist after pointless twist. In 'Panic Room' things don't go according to plan when one of the criminals turns out to be a crazy wild card. In 'Tresspass', all of the home invaders are nuts.
But to criticize the realism and gravitas of a Schumacher / Cage production is to miss the point. Surely filmmakers as experienced as everyone involved must have recognized what they were making here. The problem with films that know they're being ludicrous is that the unintentional hilarity tends to come off... well, intentional. What separates this from the watermark of great bad Cage films like 'The Wicker Man' is that there was no doubt director Neil Labute was aiming for greatness. The fact that he aimed so high, and missed so wide only adds to the fun. That Schumacher was hoping for mediocrity and landed somewhere around boredom misses the point.
