When I first saw “Snake Eyes” I absolutely loved it. I thought it, then, to be the culmination of De Palma’s life’s work. This time, well, the whole *plot thing* seemed to get in the way. It is a rather facile film — perhaps it had to be for De Palma to work the marvelous, gimmicky set-pieces. My favorite, by the way, isn’t the historic opening shot, rather the crane up and over the cut-away hotel rooms. The movie’s thesis, if it has one, is about perception, and nearly every shot in the movie is a shot-within-a-shot. Either a memory or retelling, looking through a monitor, until finally there is an actual shadowplay. Anyway, lots of fun, even if Nicolas Cage is annoying. (I put on the DVD, we saw Cage’s face on the menu page and Ann sighs, “Oh, THAT guy.” (Also, the majestic opening shot isn’t just one shot. I was looking very closely and I noticed two “Rope”-esque cuts. The imdb tells me there are actually seven cuts. I haven’t mailed the disc back, I’m gonna’ check on that and report back.)
Maybe I need to watch this one again. Admittedly, I was inebriated when I first saw it, but I distinctly remeber being very disappointed. All I remember was too much over the top Cage, too much over the top camera trickery (and I love De Palma over the top camera trickery), not enough boxing, and something about a tsunami? Maybe I was hallucinating the tsunami…