Sam Rockwell (“Heist,” “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”) looks like a con man. He’s like a cross between Jon Cazale and someone from “Saturday Night Live.” Dana Carvey, I think. With his shifty jaw and furtive, always busy lips, he may never get to play the lead in a romantic comedy, but I don’t think that keeps him up at night. We see how scrawny he is when he dances around inanely in a tanktop and a cowboy hat, and we realize, that’s the build of a man who talks his way out of things. As the daughter, Lohman is all bounces and bubbles. Yet she’s at that age when we’re not sure if she just hasn’t realized it’s time to stop being so bubbly, or if she’s putting on an act to make people like her. Lohman is a good actress because she suggests this ambiguity.
But the movie, of course, belongs to Nicholas Cage. The character of Roy may scream of conflict, but he also screams of the dangers of an over-the-top performance. The brilliance of Cage’s career is that he can play so many weirdos, flirt with going too far, and yet keep them all sympathetic. Starting with his opera-loving, one-handed romantic in “Moonstruck,” through his non-stop Elvis impersonation in “Wild at Heart,” his self-destructive drunk in “Leaving Las Vegas,” his wide-eyed psycho in “Face/Off,” and recently to his twin performances in “Adaptation”—we almost can’t believe that Roy, or any of Cage’s other freaks, could exist.
Yet Cage plays them with enough delicacy to earn that modifier “almost.” It’s that booming surfer’s voice, those wide, desperate eyes, and that hairline that isn’t so much receding as unable to keep up with how far his face is bugging out. Our first impression is that this guy must be a joke, but no, he’s not. God played a trick on me, his face implores, but I’m still trying. It’s this goofball sincerity that lets Cage sell one nutcase after another, and why we eat them up.
Finished November 14, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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