# Snake Eyes (1998)

### reviewed by
Bill Chambers

SNAKE EYES ** (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers; wchamber@netcom.ca

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starring Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise, Carla Gugino, Stan Shaw screenplay by David Koepp directed by Brian DePalma

What a strange life! A mere seven hours after returning from Orillia's CasinoRama (I actually came out ahead!), I was off to see a movie basically about, as the title suggests, gambling: SNAKE EYES. This is also the second film (after The Gingerbread Man) I've sat through this week in which a raging hurricane provides a backdrop for the shenanigans.

    Shenanigans.

SNAKE EYES' plot is deceptively simple; don't let multiple-viewpoints trick you into believing this assassination tale is more complex than the average episode of "Vega$." A major casino/hotel: Homicide Detective Rick Santoro (Cage) excitedly attends a big heavyweight showdown-fighter Lincoln Tyler(Shaw)'s championship title is on the line-with his best bud, Major Kevin Dunne (Sinise), a Washington sycophant assigned to protect the Secretary of Defense, Charles Kirkland (Joel Fabiani), who has a second row seat. A gorgeous, big-breasted redhead is suspiciously situated nearby-when Dunne tries to check her ticket, she takes off. He follows. Pow! Bam! Oomph! In Dunne's place sits a gorgeous, big-breasted blonde (Gugino); as she quietly converses with Kirkland, Tyler is knocked down for the first time in his career, and sniper shots are fired at the crowd. An assassin is immediately caught, but not before Kirkland has been killed and the mysterious blonde (who is actually a brunette, and blind without her newly-crushed specs) escapes in a stampede. Santoro, a gambling sleazebag with a checkered past, begins an investigation, relishing the opportunity to gain some respect. His detective work mostly consists of screaming at people until they become so annoyed they talk. (It's as if he's envious of the boxers, who get to pummel one another into submission.)

SNAKE EYES has numerous flaws, perhaps countless. For starters, Cage is not playing a character here: his personality shifts from scene to scene, even moment to moment, but this time out he's not playing a drunk (Leaving Las Vegas) or a psychopath (Face/Off); he's an actor paddling without a raft in a toneless performance. As for all that hooey about "believe everything but your eyes," SNAKE EYES reveals its major baddies early on, but flashbacks and long-winded exposition continue: we're shown the solution to the puzzle and then asked to suffer through the construction of the puzzle. Start at the conclusion of SNAKE EYES and work backwards and the result is pretty much the same, a film intricately but not intelligently structured. Characters who figured heavily into the conspiratorial equation vanish without explanation throughout the story. (And no, the hurricane has almost nothing to do with the climax, but implausibility does.)

DePalma's virtuoso style (my apologies for resorting to such a worn out praise) is a character in its own right here, and it is because of his mastery of technique (rather, mastery of someone's-Hitchock's? Godard's?-technique) that SNAKE EYES is a thousand-times more enjoyable than it has any right to be. The opening set-piece is brilliantly crafted, a long take that bests all his previous attempts (by now, watching a DePalma movie includes the anticipation of his next edit-try it as a drinking game) by snaking around corridors, through hotel rooms, up and down stairwells, and finally, into the arena. SteadiCams were invented for filmmakers like DePalma and cinematographers like SNAKE EYES' Stephen H. Burum. DePalma also employs nifty split-screen effects-his use of two simultaneous frames in one particular sequence is terrific. DePalma may be the only MovieBrat whose seventies sensibilities have remained utterly at his disposal. (I also liked how he showed very little of the fight-the majority of the seven-round battle happens off-camera; Dolby-ized punches clue us in to the action.)

The outcome of SNAKE EYES is a curious one. I find it hard to dismiss, based on the director's aesthetic garnishes, for lack of a better word. The movie is better than the sum of its parts, I guess, and it clicked along pleasantly. But the script is weightless, and it's a shame DePalma had to use up all these talented resources for the sake of screwing around and exercising his filmmaking biceps.

    -August, 1998

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