Cage Match

Cage Match is an ongoing look at the direct to DTV works of Nicolas Cage. I'll watch them, review them and rank them so we can determine what reigns supreme in this era of Cage.

What’s Cage up to this time?

Cage is Lieutenant Jim Stone, who works with evidence for the Las Vegas Police Department. After learning about a strange case where a drug dealer was bailed out using $200,000 in cash, Stone recruits his partner to track the source of all this money and steal it.

Who else is in the cage?

Oh nobody…except Elijah Motherfuckin’ Woods. Woods and Cage sounds like a dream pairing right? Well, it is. The dream is real!

In supporting roles there’s a few familiar faces as well. Jerry Lewis appears here in his final film, though he’s only in it for about one minute total. Creighton Duke himself, Steven Williams, has a small role. There’s also Ethan Suplee, who you may know from “oh shit look at how jacked Ethan Suplee is now!”

The writers/directors are Alex and Benjamin Brewer, who haven’t gone on to much outside of a couple Chainsmokers music videos.

Is the movie worthy of Cage?

Going in I was optimistic, as I feel like Elijah Wood is pretty selective of his roles ever since he acquired his Lord of the Rings “fuck you” money. I don’t think he would sign on to bad movie to make some dough, there must be something to it. This turned out to be correct as The Trust is one of the more pleasant surprises of this endeavor so far.

I love me a good heist movie and all of the tropes they usually hit on. Gathering the team, planning the steps, all of that stuff is fantastic and I always welcome it. It’s done on a smaller scale here as the primary heist only includes two people, but it still hits most of those same satisfying beats.

So, you got two cops. You got David (Wood) and his boss Jim (Cage) and both of them work in the Evidence section (which is absolutely the correct term and there’s no need for me to look it up) of the Las Vegas Police Department. They don’t like their jobs and aren’t making enough money so they do what any of us would do – heist shit. They learn about a drug dealer who is bailed out with $200,000 in cash. They conclude that this drug dealer must have access to a whole bunch of money and eventually find the building where it’s all being stored. The end game plan is to take over the apartment that’s directly above the safe and drill a hole through the floor to get dat money. It’s not the most elaborate heist, but the movie finds a lot of ways to make things go wrong.

I like that the heist is complicated by a good mix of circumstances beyond their control and straight up human error. The details of the plan itself are fairly well laid out, but when it comes to how they will deal with the potential tenants in the apartment where they’re setting up shop, the only idea is that they will figure it out on the spot. Turns out that doesn’t go well when they come face to face with a couple living there. That piece of the story worked really well for me as we also start to suspect something may be up with this couple.

Much of the suspense also comes from the ever-fracturing relationship between David and Jim. We, the audience, know that Jim likely can’t be trusted because he’s being played by Nic Cage with a shady moustache, but there’s no way for David to know that. Jim becomes more out of control as the story proceeds and it works well to never know just how far this dude is willing to push things.

The Trust works well as a small-scale heist movie with two great central performances. I was a little surprised this one didn’t get a wider release to be honest.

How Cage-y is Cage?

This is a pretty all-encompassing Cage performance. You get the quieter “hey this dude is a good dude” side of him, and the explosive rage side of him in the later stages of the movie. It’s pretty much everything I’m looking for with Cage in one of these movies.

You bought the blu-ray?! Are there bonus features at least?!

Decent amount of them!

There’s an informative and laid-back commentary track with the directors that once again makes it clear that the people behind these movies are, at least usually, doing their best to really put something good together. It bums me out further that they haven’t gone on to solid careers following this movie.

There’s also a couple standard behind the scenes videos that only add up to around ten minutes total.

Should you get into this cage?

I’m going to say yes! Wood and Cage are as good a pairing as you would hope them to be and it’s a perfectly entertaining heist movie so long as you aren’t expecting anything on the scale of an Ocean’s Eleven or…other heist movies whose names escape me. I think there was one called The Heist? So that one definitely had to have been about a heist.

Where does it rank?

After 211 going right near the bottom, it’s nice to bounce back with a movie that can go right near the top!

Mandy
Mom and Dad
The Trust
Rage
Arsenal
Vengeance: A Love Story
Running with the Devil
Seeking Justice
Primal
Pay the Ghost
211
Outcast
Left Behind

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