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Snake Eyes
Ya ever listen to the sound of a man drowning?
1998
Review: August 7, 2007
Director: Brian De Palma
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise, John Heard, Carla Gugino
If that’s your thing.
THE SETUP:
Complex assassination at boxing match slowly unravels.
DISCUSSION:
I’ve been parsing my viewing and re-viewing of Brian De Palma’s movies out over time, just because it’s so nice knowing that there are more out there, and when you’re really in the mood, you can watch once. But that tragic day is approaching when this will all come up an end, because I think I only have two more of his films to watch before I’ve seen them all. And then what hope will sustain me? What will I have to look forward to in life?
I saw this when it was out in theaters and thought it was an interesting disappointment, but that was before I felt like I really knew how to read De Palma’s films. Now I think it’s a rousing technical exercise that still somehow loses steam as a movie.
We begin by seeing this newscaster on a TV. She’s standing out in a hurricane that is whipping Atlantic City, introducing this boxing match that is going to be the final event before the hall its in is converted to a casino. The secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is in attendance. Obviously it’s not Rumsfeld, but wouldn’t it be better if it were? We then pan over to another monitor, where we see Nicholas Cage as Rick Santoro, who then walks around in front of the camera. This is all part of the 12-or-so minute shot that opens the movie. Only, while still super impressive, it’s not really that long because it’s broken up with Rope-type wipes that are supposed to be seamless. The first one, at 2:42, has a person walk in front of the camera, but when they walk away, it is clearly a different shot with a different angle. I’m sorry Brian, but we’re going to have to disqualify that one, and take 2:42 off your total score. Yep, I’m a hardass.
Anyway, what we’re doing is setting up the whole parameters and primary event of the story. Cage, who is a cop, walks around, meeting various people. He wants to make a bet on the fight, but has no money. Then he sees Luis Guzman [looking particularly delicious] and shakes him down for money. So Cage is a crooked cop. He takes that money and uses it to place his bet. Then he goes down to ringside, with his wife on the cellphone and mistress on the other line. There’s a funny moment when he’s talking to his wife and obviously wanting to get off the phone, and she suggests she put their son Mikey on. “No, no, don’t put Mikey—Hi Mikey,” and then, a few seconds later, “No, no, don’t put mommy back on…” He then meets Gary Sinese as Kevin Dunne [which is some sort of in-joke, because the actor Kevin Dunn is also in the movie], big decorated military dude and head of security for the event. There is a lot of material about how Kevin dresses with respect and has decorum, whereas Rick is dressed like a sleazy lounge lizard [“Pardon my savoir-fare”] and is constantly leering at women. They have a brief talk about how Rick can’t stay monogamous, whereas Kevin has been with his wife for however many years, then Kevin sees this redhead [like Ronald McDonald kind of redhead] in a red dress with prominent cleavage, whose presence seems like an obvious security threat. We are meant to believe that Kevin’s blueballs lead him to the red woman, and she takes off and he runs up into the stands to follow her. Then this woman all in white shows up and sits next to Rick and starts talking to the secretary, and things are just getting heated between the talk and the fight when blam! The secretary is shot!
Now, many of De Palma’s detractors deride him as being all style and no substance, but here’s a good example of his style put to good purpose. I was wondering what the point of the super-long take was, because, for example, the one that opens The Bonfire of the Vanities was long and complex but didn’t really seem to have a point, but this one does. It very effectively sets up the parameters of the space, but in such a way that we really have an indelible sense of the arena’s scale and complexity. We also firmly establish who was where and at what time, which is important because the rest of the movie will be going back and replaying these events we’ve seen from varying perspectives. So in these two ways, it’s aces, and really serves the overall point of the film. As an added bonus, it provides a steady build-up of energy so that when the shots ring out and the crowd panics, the energy just explodes and it’s really exciting.
On the other hand, the movie comes dangerously close to shooting its wad within the first 15 minutes, as this sequence is such a showstopper. It’s like having the climax of Carrie at the beginning. Regardless, the whole crowd panic scene [and its prolonged introduction] are pure genius and definitely worth seeing by even the casual De Palma enthusiast.
So immediately afterward Kevin is freaking, despite the fact that he supposedly killed the killer, because he deserted his post in order to do that. Rick tells him that all he has to do is “you tell them what you did right, and you leave out the rest.” He is quite tenacious in his ferocity to defend his friend, and we must note his devotion to Kevin and keeping him out of trouble. Part of this includes his wresting command of the scene from the FBI guy, and supposedly keeping every one of 14,000 “witnesses,” although we see quite a number make it out the door and the rest of the people have no bearing on the story. Now, no one makes reference to the fact that it seems to be quite remarkable that the redhead should lead Kevin precisely where she did, and that although he “abandoned his post,” he happened to end up 10 feet from where the killer was.
SPOILERS > > >
Now Rick [and, of course, De Palma] is fascinated by the idea that this arena has hundreds of cameras and each of them caught a different view of what happened. Now, after the shots rang out, Rick’s eyes locked with the boxer’s, who was awake after supposedly being knocked out. So Rick intuits that something is up with this, and looks at the tapes to discover that the boxer took a dive, the fight was fixed. He goes to visit the boxer and then we flash back and see a few minutes from the original opening showcase, but from the boxer’s perspective. It begins with a POV shot [i.e. we are seeing what the boxer sees] and there’s a nice moment when we turn to a mirror, and the camera/boxer sees himself, then we come OUT of the boxer’s perspective and to an objective perspective. Just clever with the mirror and all that. Stan Shaw as the boxer gets a good emoting scene as he thinks he has really knocked out his opponent, thus blowing what was to be a blown fight.
You did notice that I said SPOILERS, right? Because at this spot—the midpoint of the movie—De Palma lets us know that Kevin Dunne IS the killer! That’s it, then we join what used to be the blonde woman, who is now the black-haired woman, she was wearing a wig. She has lost her glasses, and is extremely nearsighted, and is essentially wandering around blind. Oh, and covered in blood and sought-after as a suspicious, uh, suspect. She comes on to this older pudge in order to get into his room, and there follows a De Palma showstopper as both Rick and Kevin are closing in on her from different directions. We also have a nice, showy shot that goes up and across a cutway of several hotel rooms, seeing what’s going on in each one. I liked it but I have to say I was distracted by the fact that the hotel rooms didn’t seem to line up with the hallway outside.
So Rick gets to her first and she spills her whole story to him—in a nice split-screen sequence we now hear what she was saying to the Secretary moments before he was shot, while the other side shows what else was happening around the arena at that moment. This, however, lets Rick know that Kevin is the killer, which he initially quite touchingly doesn’t want to believe. I should mention here that Cage is quite good.
So Rick goes to the control room and watches a different tape that clearly shows that Kevin is a bad guy. There’s a good thing where we see Rick looking at the tape, then cut to the tape, and when we cut back to Rick we can see two shows in the far upper left corner; someone is in the room.
This of course is Rick, and he gives his whole villainous speech, which includes the question “You ever listen to the sound of a man drowning?” To which Rick responds “Not in a while, I used to have it on LP but I haven’t yet replaced it on CD.” Actually, no he doesn’t. Rick, who previously said that “loyalty is my only vice,” realized that he was been played and betrayed by his good friend. And part of the reason Kevin picked him is that he knew that no matter what happened, Rick could always be bought. But—and this gives the whole movie and Rick’s character a tragic air—Rick has completely misunderstood his friend and his true loyalty, and his attempts to buy Rick’s silence only offend and wound him further. I totally missed this entire thread the first time I saw the movie, and it’s very good—so good, in fact, it makes you wish the movie as a whole was, well, better.
So now Kevin wants Rick to hand over the brunette, but Rick refuses, and ends up getting the living shit beat out of him. Now, please recall that there is a hurricane going on outside. There’s a long, very De Palmian walk toward where the woman is hiding, and then—well, I’m not going to tell you the end.
But—and if you don’t want to know the postscript, it’s the next paragraph for you—we’ve left it that Kevin has been arrested. Then we have this odd postscript, delivered in a TV news style, that Rick became this hero cop, then charges of corruption were levied and now he’s going to prison! It’s quite odd. Why do this? We had a perfectly serviceable ending and then it’s like “Well, actually the good guys didn’t win, they lost.” Maybe that’s the point, it’s sort of a cynical thing, but it doesn’t really work on much of any level and makes you finish the movie with a “what’s that about?” rather than a “eh, that was okay,” that you would have had if they’d just ended where they had before.
This last scene takes place in front of the construction site where the casino is being built over the site of the arena. If you stay through the [teeny-tiny] credits you see a ring built into one of the columns they are erecting. And for a second you think it must be Kevin [there was a brief shot that emphasized his blue ring], but no, it’s this woman we quickly saw Kevin dump in the cement mixer, who I think was the redhead… and so while it seems significant, it’s also like “what does that have to do with anything?” Is it just an additional level of irony? But what’s it being ironic about? I’m prepared to give them the benefit of a doubt, but suffice to say I didn’t get it. By the way, while the credits run we have a song—a dreadful, dreadful song—based on that one line of Kevin’s the chorus of which goes “A drowning man does not go softly, you can hear the final warning.”
< < < SPOILERS END
One other thing of note is that there was supposed to be a tidal wave that floods the casino right at the very end. De Palma took it out because it was too out-of-the-blue and jarring right at the end, and while it doesn’t seem like it affected that much… well, we’ll never really know, will we? Cage makes reference to being underwater in a tunnel during the last scene [which is also one long shot, meaning they couldn’t edit that dialogue out]. I think it’s quite rude not to include that scene separately on the DVD as, even if it wouldn’t have worked in the movie, it’s always fun to see tidal waves.
This had potential. As it is, it’s okay as a movie and quite admirable as a technical exercise, and it’s hard to say exactly why it doesn’t work, but somehow it just doesn’t work. I think at some point, like with the later Black Dahlia, it becomes so complex you just give up. And not to mention that I don’t think political assassinations really energize the imaginations of the public. So—while this may be a sad reflection on society’s disinterest in politics—it’s hard to get emotionally invested. Secretary of Defense? Who cares? We’ll get another one. So all this leaves viewers to get excited about is the complexity of the mystery, but if it’s a mystery one doesn’t have all that much interest in solving, it becomes a little hollow at the center. The one emotional hook and way into the movie—Rick’s tragic loyalty—is so subtle and realized so late that, while I think it’s quite a strength, it’s easy to miss entirely. As I mentioned, I missed this whole aspect the first time around.
In many ways the movie this is closest to is Blow Out, because of the political assassination, the innocent man drawn into to an investigation, and the deeply cynical ending. But this one is a little more emotionally distant than Blow Out, because we spend less time getting to know Rick [who is not immediately likeable, as Travolta was] and the technique here is so much more prominent. So it ends up as an extremely clever exercise that almost works, but somehow just doesn’t add up. You sit there saying “Oh, I see what he was trying to do,” but that’s different than sitting there enjoying it because it works.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you’re into De Palma or if you like puzzling mystery movies
