Matchstick Men vs You Can Count On Me

Movies about con-artists usually fall into one of two categories: slick, classy, gentlemanly con-men with one last score to settle (Ocean’s Eleven), or low-life criminals who’ve made the con their way of life (The Grifters). There’s usually an ending…and then a fade, and then the real ending, where we find out who was conned, and who won. Sometimes it’s more than one ending. The Heist was fun, but it had so many endings I felt like I was playing Monopoly with my brother. He does this thing where he’ll take all of your money except a dollar, just so the game will continue and he can keep winning a while longer.

For most of Matchstick Men, director Ridley Scott straddles these two worlds, bringing us a snappy 1960s style caper/con movie, but maintaining human drama the whole time. Most of the time anyway, and for all of the characters. Well, two of them. One and a half.

Roy (Nicolas Cage) and Frank (Sam Rockwell) are small time con-artists on the verge of the big time. They employ a rather sophisticated con, involving fraud and taxes and telemarketers. It’s one of those scenes I enjoy in movies, where you’re shown how to do something, and you begin to think “yeah, I could do that. I could scam people out of their bank accounts,” but it has more to do with the artistry on screen than the actual deftness of the con. I’m not sure how well that particular con would work, but in the movie it does, even after a moment when Roy almost loses his cool. Someone opened a door, you see, and Roy can’t handle that. With the sun streaming in, Roy can see every particle of dust floating in the air, and the light is unbearably bright. Suddenly, the room is spinning, voices coming and going, and it’s getting harder to breathe. Roy’s got problems. His swinging 1960s-style bachelor pad is spotless, and the doors are always opened three times thanks to his obsessive compulsive disorder. He chain-smokes and eats the same canned tuna dinner each evening. When things go wrong, say if there’s a footprint on the carpet, he lets out a little “Pygmies”. He’s full of blinks and ticks and “mmm”s, but everything’s fine, cause he’s got these pills, see. And then, before he can catch them… the pills are down the drain.

He sees a therapist, thinking he can just walk in and get a quick prescription, and begrudgingly ends up talking. He talks about his career (“antiques”), relationships (none for quite some time) and his family (no clue. Might have a kid, might not.) The doctor agrees to prescribe the pills, but wants to keep talking, and before long, Roy is opening up. He finds that he does indeed have a daughter, and agrees to meet her, on the condition that his therapist makes the call.

When they meet, Matchstick Men becomes something else. It’s like one of those snakes, swallowing things bigger than its body, and then expanding to accommodate them. Matchstick Men starts with the cons, adds the phobias, and then adds the daughter, but instead of leaving all the loose plots and threads lying around, it uses each one to enrich the others.

The daughter, Angela, is fourteen, and played by Allyson Lohman, who is not fourteen, but had me fooled. She’s emotional, energetic, funny, smart and up for anything with her dad, especially once she finds out what his “antiques” business really involves. Their relationship moves slowly at first; he hasn’t spoken to Angela’s mother since before Angela was born. Angela is ungainly and undisciplined. She tracks up the carpet and trashes the bathroom. As Angela becomes more hip to Dad’s business, his enthusiasm for the con morphs a little into actual enthusiasm for parenting. There’s a nice scene where he teaches her a small-time con, and then makes her give the money back. After all, teaching her how to take it is education; allowing her to keep it is a crime. And that’s part of the beauty of Matchstick Men. Roy, unlike virtually every other movie con-artist, feels no sense of entitlement about his lifestyle. He’s not some Robin Hood, sticking it to the man, and he’s not exactly living the high life anyway. Roy knows he’s pretty much a low-life, and it’s a fairly safe bet he knows all the answers about where his phobias come from, without any couch time or prescriptions. However, hanging with his daughter provides Roy with a new perspective, and he gains enough confidence to attempt a big con, much to the delight of both Angela and Frank.

I know you’re thinking you can see where this is all going. And you’re right. Matchstick Men follows the pattern you’ve got in your head almost to the letter. They stage a big con, with Angela involved, and it becomes bigger than anyone expected, and more dangerous. There’s a chase through a parking garage that is the first scene of its kind to actual make me fear for the people being chased. (Watch The Pelican Brief for an example of how tedious and silly almost the exact same chase can be in the wrong hands.) Loyalties are questioned, money is lost and found, and we think it ends, but then…”One Year Later.”

Matchstick Men is not Ridley Scott’s best film, but it’s definitely one of his most fun. Visually, it’s just right: from the retro edits to the electric blue of Roy’s swimming pool. I also appreciated the nice character bits. For the first time in a movie like this, the therapist (Bruce Altman) isn’t wacky or neurotic; he’s just doing his job.  I also liked that Roy’s crush was on an age-appropriate Shelia Kelly, who, with her ordinary job and laid-back personality, is probably perfect for him. It’s odd that roles like this rarely get the casting they need, but Matchstick Men gets it right.  Allyson Lohman is fantastic, and in a staggering change of pace, plays Angela not as some jailbait Lolita, but rather as a regular kid. She skateboards, laughs out loud, and…brace yourself, eats. A lot. Often. Sam Rockwell is great too, and continues his path of just getting cooler with each movie. I can’t tell if he’s going to wind up some awesome character actor, or just be one of our weirder leading men (Some kind of William H. Macy/Johnny Depp hybrid). As for Nicolas Cage, I think Matchstick Men contains one of his best performances. The phobic/OCD scenes are funny at times, but Cage doesn’t play them for laughs. You can see his frustration with his disorders, and his relief when he’s found safety. Cage takes as many risks here as he did in Leaving Las Vegas, and it pays off. There’s a scene in a pharmacy—meant, I think, to be funny—where Roy’s desperation is so great we see that what would otherwise be called “quirky” is actually pretty damn scary.

Selecting a double feature for Matchstick Men, I was tempted to stick with the world of con-artists, but nothing fit. A nice follow-up to Matchstick Men, I think, is You Can Count on Me. Like Matchstick Men, it involves an unconventional relationship between a troubled man and his younger relative, and there are cons left and right, though not the kind that makes anyone rich, and not the kind that can be given back.

You Can Count on Me, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, revolves around a couple months in the life Sammy (Laura Linney), a single woman from a small New York town. She dates a nice but uninteresting man, and raises her son, Rudy (Rory Culkin), quietly and on her own. She works at a bank, which she could probably run herself, but instead must contend with a new boss she can’t stand (played with Office Space efficiency by Matthew Broderick).  And then Terry (Mark Ruffalo) comes into town. Terry is Sammy’s brother, and hasn’t been around for quite some time. We learn at the beginning of the movie that their parents were killed in a car wreck, and you’ll figure out fairly quickly that Sammy grew into a responsible adult, probably almost immediately, and Terry is still working on it. Terry leaves a girl behind, as well as some problems heavy enough not to be mentioned. When he rolls into town, Sammy is thrilled. Terry will have a chance to bond with Rudy, and the family will be complete once again. He needs money though, and then he’s moving on. That Sammy’s life is barely held together isn’t helping matters.

While Matchstick Men seems special for its handling of the relationship between the father and daughter, You Can Count on Me trumps it, and nearly every other movie, by being so truthful with its handling of just about every kind of relationship imaginable. Sammy and Terry have the easy rapport that comes with being siblings, but it’s tinged with frustration and jealousy. We don’t get every detail, because Sammy and Terry live on screen as actual people. It’s pretty clear they’ve had the conversations they needed to have, and whether or not things have been resolved, it’s time to move on. Likewise, Sammy and her son Rudy live what appears to be a real life. You Can Count on Me takes place over the span of weeks, but it’s never a question of whether or not these characters exist before and after the story being told. The characters don’t seem like they were created just for telling this story.

Like Matchstick Men, part of the joy of You Can Count on Me is in the scenes with the kid. Rudy is suspicious of Terry at first; he barely remembers him, only getting details here and there from his mom. Terry, not surprisingly, is sort of full of shit, and sees the world as against him. Of course, with Sammy questioning his every move, and a local priest stopping by to minister, Terry’s attitude is understandable. With Rudy, Terry is completely honest, not sparing the kid’s feelings or talking down to him. When Terry sneaks Rudy into a bar and enlists him as a partner in a pool hustle, you can tell it’s the most special Rudy has felt in months. And like Matchstick Men, there is a moment in You Can Count on Me when Terry gets Rudy a little too close to danger, thinking he was strong enough for both of them.

I’m trying to choose my words carefully, because I love You Can Count on Me, and I guess I want to impress you enough to watch it. It’s not really a movie a review can do justice. Let’s just cut to the chase: Every line of dialogue sounds like actual conversations these characters would have. Every car, house and business is perfectly chosen. Even the bank and its crappy out-of-date computers look like they would in a small town. All of the performances in You Can Count on Me are excellent. Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney are completely believable, not only as siblings, but also as people who have choices to make, and--deadlines looming--sometimes find that moving sideways isn’t so bad, what with forward being all the way up ahead. In You Can Count on Me, we don’t get a “One Year Later.” We don’t even get a “tomorrow.” We don’t need it. Sometimes, despite how fun a con can be, you just want the truth.

Matchstick Men: B+

You Can Count On Me: A