"Snake Eyes" is a painfully bad movie. It would just be a bad movie, but the first 15 minutes are so fantastic that every cringe-inducing plot twist and dull set piece that follow only serve as a reminder to how quickly the film went downhill.
It is painful to watch Nicolas Cage's charged, flamboyant performance quickly erode into a bad Bruce Willis impersonation. It is painful to watch the claustrophobic suspense of the opening scenes be opened up to one absurd chase sequence after another. And it is painful to watch director Brian De Palma still obsess over Hitchcock.
De Palma ("The Untouchables," "Carlito's Way") begins "Snake Eyes" with an amazing 15-minute, one-take shot in which we follow Cage's shamelessly corrupt cop weave his way around the low lifes and big wigs attending a prize fight in Atlantic City. He introduces us to the boxing champ (Stan Shaw), the military arms producer (John Heard), the beautiful red-head, the seductive blond and, most importantly, his childhood friend played by Gary Sinise, who is in charge of protecting the Secretary of Defense at the fight.
The shot runs from Cage's pre-fight betting to the fight itself, and then to the assassin's bullet that takes out the Secretary of Defense. It's a brilliantly staged and acted shot -- with maybe a few unnoticeable cuts snuck in along the way -- that almost makes the film worth seeing.
But De Palma's usually full bag of tricks, however contrived as they often are, empties out pretty quickly after that.
The arena is sealed and Cage and Sinise must retrace the events leading up to the assassination. De Palma then re-enacts the first part of the film over and over again from different characters' points of view. The movie continually goes over the same points as if its plot were actually complex.
As it turns out, the conspiracy has all the ingenious plot machinations of a below-average episode of "Scooby Doo," with Cage as the pesky kid who gets in the way. The script, by the usually competent David Koepp ("Jurassic Park"), lacks any real surprising twists -- the bad guys look and act like bad guys -- and the dialogue is often so terrible it's hard to believe Cage and Sinise could force themselves to say it.
Of the 14,000 people stuck in the arena, the same four people always seem to run into each other. One character walks around covered in blood, but no one bothers to question her. Others manage to find back alleys to congregate in, despite the fact that everything is sealed off.
De Palma tries his best to compensate for the lack of content with inventive visuals, but for the most part they fall flat. De Palma has always fashioned himself as the reincarnation of Alfred Hitchock, and this still holds true with "Snake Eyes." From the way he dolls up his women to the Bernard Herrmann-like score, "Snake Eyes" steals as much from Hitchcock as... well, as De Palma's earlier films.
Not that De Palma is a bad filmmaker. "Carlito's Way" had the substance to keep up with his flashy visuals, and De Palma staged a truly exciting chase sequence in Grand Central Station. Even in the conventional "Mission: Impossible," De Palma managed to squeeze in a few suspenseful sequences.
But in "Snake Eyes" De Palma phones most of the film in, hoping the excitement of the beginning could carry it through. He rolled the dice, and guess what they came up.
