‘Matchstick Men’ is a Perfect Nic Cage Vehicle
Nicolas Cage and Alison Lohman in Matchstick Men | Credit: Warner Bros.
Roy (Nicolas Cage) is a conman suffering from a number of phobias, running a number of small-time cons to pay the bills. When his long-lost daughter enters his life, everything changes for him.
Do you ever watch a movie and think This role was made for this actor? That’s exactly how I felt about Nic Cage in the role of Roy. I’m not sure that a more perfect role has ever existed for one of the most iconic actors of this generation.
Roy has a number of facial and verbal tics that Cage executes with perfection. There’s also a deep humanity to Roy. You know that he’s more than just his phobias and mannerisms. Throughout the film, we see how he interacts with the other people in his life, how he does his job rather well, and copes with the war his brain is waging on him. I was captivated by Roy the entire time, and I think that’s in large part due to Nic Cage’s performance.
Throughout the film, Roy develops a relationship with his daughter Angela (Alison Lohman), who completely turns his world upside down. We see a different side of Roy as he has to figure out how to be a parent—something he has no experience and previously had no desire to do. All of these moments are appropriately tender and what you’d expect to see from this type of storyline. Though there aren’t any particularly novel beats to this part of the film, it’s still effective.
It’s fascinating to see what Roy’s life looked like before Angela entered his life and after. He’s no longer isolated and alone (except for Frank (Sam Rockwell)). Instead, we learn that he can form deep relationships. He is able to break out of his routine and try new things. He begins experiencing more of life, rather than being trapped.
Now I want to talk about the ending of the film, which means I will spoil some things. This film was released in 2003, but there are some pretty big twists and turns throughout that I don’t want to spoil. So if you haven’t watched Matchstick Men, please don’t read on.
Nicolas Cage and Sam Rockwell in Matchstick Men | Credit: Warner Bros.
It’s really interesting to watch a film for the first time decades after it first came out. I can’t separate myself from my experiences or the time that I’m living in, despite my best efforts to come to a film with an open mind. I bring myself to each movie experience, which colors how I interpret what I’m seeing.
Matchstick Men has a pretty big twist at the end when it’s revealed that Frank was behind it all and stole from Roy. That is a huge reveal! But it wasn’t that shocking to me. I thought something like that would happen, though the scale of his operation was larger than I expected.
As the credits rolled, I wondered how this film would’ve landed for me in 2003. Would I have been blindsided or blown away by that ending? I think I might have. I think that ending would have been more impactful simply because the world was different, and the types of media that were popular were different.
I think I needed two things for that ending to work for me today. I needed Roy to be less naive and/or more clever. He could be blindsided by this news, but I needed a little more shrewdness from him. We are told over and over again that Roy is a very good conman and thinks things through, but the film implies that he lost all of his money because it was stored in one location. He also trusted his partner too much and trusted his therapist far too quickly. There wasn’t a moment of doubt in him from start to finish, and I struggled to believe that. If he were as good a conman as the film wanted me to believe, I think he would’ve been at least a little more guarded.
Frank’s plan is also very sinister. At the very least, he got someone to pose as a therapist and prescribe his friend fake drugs to manipulate him into seeking out his potential child. He also sets up a young woman to play Roy’s kid and form a bond with him. Frank dangles in front of Roy something that he never thought he wanted, but ends up being something that he desires deeply. Then Frank uses all of Roy’s vulnerabilities to steal all of his money. That is dark!
(Also, Roy’s pills in the beginning are clearly Benadryl, which makes me wonder how long Frank had been running this con on his “partner.”)
Because this film was released in 2003, there’s a lightness or innocence about the ending that didn’t match the twistedness of Frank’s actions. I wanted something in the writing or the filmmaking to be a little more sinister, rather than ending on this hopeful note with Roy. While I’m glad that he was able to form connections with others and has built a new life for himself, that wasn’t what I wanted to know more about.
I still have so many questions about Frank. I, honestly, would love a sequel with Frank today, running cons and being generally shady. A Frank-focused movie could be appropriately dark and sinister to reflect his ruthlessness. And Sam Rockwell would be great in that type of role.
Who do you think we could call to make this happen?