Matchstick Men (2003) – 5.5

A bit of throwaway film by Ridley Scott – small, slick, and incredibly derivative.  Nicholas Cage continues the slow, difficult trek towards career redemption with an earnest performance as Roy, an obsessive-compulsive con artist who starts the last job of his career with his partner, Frank (Sam Rockwell), just as he discovers he has a teenage daughter, Angela (Alison Lohman).  What a coincidence.  Scott effectively captures a certain humid South-Beach-motel lifestyle, and Lohman absolutely glows onscreen, but the film buckles under the weight of its recent various influences, which, incidentally, are an exercise in con artistry themselves – starting with David Mamet’s 1987 mini-masterpiece House of Games, which was knocked off by the 2000 Argentinian film Nine Queens, which was more recently knocked off by the American version Criminal (2004).  And of course, there’s also the original father-daughter-heist flick, Peter Bogdanovich’s only good film Paper Moon (1973).  In any event, there are worse ways to spend two hours than with Matchstick Men, or any of its second-class cohorts, for that matter, but you’re better off just seeing the originals instead.