Snake Eyes
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.00 You Save: $1.98 (20%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Snake Eyes
Movie Review: DePalma's Sinister Noirish Conspiracy Thriller!
Summary: 5 Stars
Brian DePalma wastes no time taking viewers inside his noirish conspiracy thriller set in Atlantic City during a hurricane. His opening shot flows for over 15 minutes, uninterupted, introducing every character you need to know in that short time frame. He interweaves between TV point of view to the actual casino in record breaking time, and in breathtaking fashion.
Nicolas Cage as Rick Santoro is so perfectly cast as an over the top cop on the make, that it's so easy from the very beginning of the film to forget it's only a movie.
Between the very first shot of the politician and his entourage, including two powerful characters in the film played by Gary Sinise as Kevin Dunne (a friend of Rick's), a political figure played by John Heard, the female newscaster, Rick Santoro, a sleazy news reporter (played by Kevin Dunn), a bookie that owes Santoro a dept (played by Louis Guzman), the boxer Lincoln Tyler (played by Stan Shaw), his promoter, and everybody else involved in the 'conspiracy', as well as everything you need to know about the story, whether seen or heard, are all shown to the viewer in that short time span.
After the assasination takes place and all h*ll breaks loose in the casino, we are then taken on a journey of trying to solve the crime in a very Agatha Christie/Karasowa's "Rashomon" style that is utterly breathtaking in every scene, every flasback, and every version of what you see or what you are told. Everyone's story is slightly different, so no one knows who is telling the truth until the end of the film.
And, DePalma employs so many terrific camera angles and devices and tricks, that the film should be kept in a film school vault and studied every year for the next couple of decades.
From a mysterious redheaded woman to a blonde who is revealed to be a brunette with a wig on (played by Carla Gugino), from following a bloody hundred dollar bill to a ruby red ring, DePalma sets us on the coarse, working from a great script by David Koep (who scripted "Mission: Impossibe" and "Carlito's Way"), putting things right before your very eyes, and/or in your ears, just to have you questioning everything and everyone you see on screen.
And, the dark humor/irony is delicious! Especially when Rick recieves a phone call from a show girl, saying she's his lucky number seven right as the assasination takes place.
The slogan "Believe everything except your eyes" was a perfect tag line for this 1998 classic psychological mystery, noirish conspiracy thriller from the Master of Suspense. Because, after the film is over, and you know the way the plot turned out, then go back and view it again, you see that DePalma shows everything you need to see in the first 15 minutes of the film, and it's all right in front of your very eyes!
And, be sure to watch this film all the way until you see the words "The End" pop up to know just how sinister this story really is. Hint: A ruby red ring in stone.?.?.
And, when DePalma returns his camera back outside the arena, and the storm is raging, thus is the build up to a very awesome climatic scene in what is already established as a VERY noirish story/film.
Awesome! I would rate it a LOT higher than just 5 stars if possible.
Brian DePalma really hit a solid homerun for his fans with this classic, exposing just how evil, ugly, and sinister the world of Atlantic City really is.
And, the song at the end of the film By Mercedes Brooks, called "Sin City" is awesome, and the lyrics recap the story of the film.
Definetly the best film Nicolas Cage has EVER been lucky enough to be cast in, and his best performance by far!
Highly recommended! Thank you.
Movie Review: De Palma Gets High on Celluloid!
Summary: 5 Stars
It never fails: mention a De Palma film and you'll polarize the room. Just look at the reviews here: everything from 1-5 stars. I happen to fall on the side of ***** myself, but I have been following De Palma's career for over twenty years, and think I know what he's up to more than most folks. In a nutshell, the style of this film IS its subtance, and I'm not making facile excuses. De Palma has explored with more daring and consistency than any other American director of the last 30 years how audio-visual technique ( music and soundtrack are as important as image to his operatic style) can evoke meaning and emotion without the need to ground it in realistic dialogue, character psychology, and "classic" plot formulae. De Palma pushes us to the edge of our willingness to suspend disbelieve, even to ludicrous degrees, because he knows how the power of cinema can suture us into the action projected on the screen, despite our self-conscious pooh pooh-ing of his films' many coincidences and over-the-top performances (of both his actors and his camerawork). Snake Eyes is all about this very idea, both for us as spectators and for Rick, the spectator within. Wasn't the tagline after all, "Don't believe your eyes?" I also think that the sour response so many people have to the lightly parodic deus-ex-machina ending indicates the increasingly course tastes of contemporaray audiences who prefer the scatology of the Farelly Bothers or the pseudo-profundities of The Force and The Matrix. And Sean Penn's recent criticisms of Cage's performance are insensitive to Cage (who seems fully to know what he's doing here as an actor) and to De Palma (who directed Penn in an equally over-the-top but knowing performance in Carlito's Way). Nevertheless, it may simply be the case that De Palma is not for all tastes. Perhaps only hardcore cinephiles with a highly developed sense of irony can appreciate De Palma, a parodox of contemporary cinema who is at once experimental and commercial. For others accustomed to standard fare, he is simply bewildering. But for too many hypocritical middle-brow critics, he has become a guilty pleasure, the "direcor you hate to love" (and not the other way around).Movie Review: De Palmas finest
Summary: 5 Stars
I think Brian DePalma is very underrated, I think that most of his films are very good, and he has a very good eye. Using great camera angles, a good plot, this movie delivers everything you want in a film. I especially like DePalmas trademark of using a split screen to tell the story (as he did in Carrie). Nicholas Cage is a very talented actor playing a crooked cop that is caught in a trap after a senator is assassinated by a foriegn terrorist hired by Powell aircraft to kill a traitor in the company who was to blow the cover of a faulty missles system to be approved by the senator. I very good plot, and I dont think that people should criticise a movie for being unbelievable, well what is it people? Does it lack plot? Is too complicated for fragile minds? And now I heard that it is too unbelievable? Does this make a movie a bad one? It's just a movie! Snake Eyes is rated R but should be rated PG-13 due to mild language, no nudity, some violence, and adult situations. I guess thats why the MPAA took such a long time to rate this movie. I Highly Recommend this one along with watching Mission:Impossible (dont see MI:2 it's a waste of time and money, the first one is way better).Movie Review: A Somewhat Underrated Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
I find that people don't really give Snake Eyes enough credit. There are claims that Cage's character can't really be related to. Well, how many movies can you find where you can actually relate to what the character is going through? I don't know about you, but I have a very hard time relating to Bruce Willis' part in "Die Hard" and I also have a tough time relating to Nicolas Cage's character in "Gone In 60 Seconds". Why? Because I've never been a One-man army against terrorists and I've never been a car thief. The point is, that you don't have to relate to the character to enjoy the movie.I find this movie enjoyable because the camera work is superb, the plot keeps you interested, and Cage plays his role as a weak, corrupted cop very well. Cage's character really comes across as being a flashy sleezeball, and yet some people are attributing that to poor acting on his part. There is a fine line between bad acting and a bad character. Unfortunately, many people confuse the two.
Overall, if you're looking for an excellent mystery/suspense flick, put this on your lists of things to see.
Movie Review: A very complex film -- much more than it's given credit.
Summary: 5 Stars
The editorial review here by the Amazon guy (Keough?) is totally off the mark. He missed out on the entire point of Sinise purposefully plotting the crime where he did and not "coincidentally" with his friend. Forget all the dazzling camera work and just focus on the two main characters. Sinise's motivation is one of the more compelling that I have seen in ANY movie villain, and not easy to dismiss. To the film's credit it never marginalizes him, and winds up making some pretty serious statements about how we view loyalty. Cage's character and his relationship with Sinise really brings this out. Quite simply, a brilliant script. The only thing I would say is a bit hokey is the outfits of the ladies. But really, that just kind of makes it fun. Gorgeous Ryuiki Sakamoto score. This movie is not about DePalma flexing his technical muscles. It's one of the best American films in decades.