Most filmmakers have peaks and troughs throughout their work, and no better example of this would be Joel Schumacer. The guy has directed some brilliant films like St. Elmo's Fire, The Lost Boys, Flatliners and Falling Down. But on the flip side, he has also helmed Bad Company, The Number 23 and most horrifically of all, Batman and Robin.
His latest film, Trespass, starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman is sadly a film that definitely falls into the trough category. And not only is it a woeful film, it was a disaster of the most epic proportions. Costing $35,000,000 to make, it raked in a dire $24,094 in its first ten days in cinemas in the States, where it was then pulled out, only to surface on DVD a mere 8 days later (making it the quickest cinema to DVD wait ever.) It is an astounding example of a flop.
And the trouble didn't even start there. Cage decided he wanted to change roles near the start of the shoot, from the husband to a kidnapper, and filmmakers even went so far as to contact Liev Schreiber to take on the role, until Cage returned the next day...playing the husband again.
The husband Cage plays is Kyle Miller, whose business is diamonds. He's married to Sarah (Kidman) and they have a rebellious teenage daughter (Liana Liberato.) One evening, they become a victim of a home invasion, but as the evening goes on, secrets are revealed and their situation gets worse and worse.
The immediate problem is that I could under no circumstances buy Cage (who is looking very paunchy in the film) and Kidman as man and wife. I just couldn't make that stretch. And matters are made worse as ridiculous plot twist follows ridiculous plot twist. It resembles a particularly bad soap opera most of the time.
The performances are diabolical across the board, also. Cage you can expect, his recent output has been increasingly bizarre, but he just phones it in, there's not even a lot there to mock after a while, and I like mocking his inferior films.
Kidman just shrieks and screams her way through the film, and the kidnappers are all pretty terrible, with a' special' note for Jordano Spiro, who was embarrassingly bad as the deranged stripper female intruder Petal (Yeah, really.) It's truly a face palm performance there. The others? Well, I have to make the soap opera comparison again as that's the level of acting we are dealing with here.
Trespass seemed liked the longest 2 hours of my life, till I finally saw it was over and had only run 85 minutes. The whole thing is an amateurish, poorly acted, boring mess. Let's just hope Joel Schumacer gets another peak soon. And as for Cage? The films so bad, he refuses to watch the finished product. Let that be the warning to heed.
*
One of the worst films of the year. There's nothing worth recommending here. Even fans of mocking Nicolas Cage's OTT style and crazy wigs will get bored after the first half hour. Absolute dreck.
1 comment:
Says it all that I'd never heard of a film starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman - didn't even think it was possibly to churn out a nationwide DVD release in 8 days, but clearly it is!!
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