Trespass is a Joel Schumacher action-thriller that, as one woman smartly remarked when exiting the theatre, has “lots of twists and turns and they just [keep] twisting and turning into each other.” Yet, Trespass may leave you feeling more bored than thrilled.
When anyone mentions Nicolas Cage as the star of a new film, there are bound to be some groans. Still, I went into “Trespass” with no expectations. Nicole Kidman is in it; I didn’t think it could be that bad. It was…
Sarah (Kidman) and Kyle (Cage) live in a stark modern mansion out in the middle of the woods. Their marriage is predictably troubled – Kyle is a diamond dealer, and he’s more dedicated to his business conversations than paying attention to Sarah, who dons a slinky little black dress at the beginning of the film to try and rekindle some of the lost spark in her husband’s affections for her. Their daughter, Avery (Liana Liberato) just wants to party, so she sneaks out. Soon, the robbers come knocking, and the rest of the film degenerates into a wailing, blubbering orgy of gun pointing, betrayal (or fidelity) and confusion.
The motivations of the characters are incredibly muddled. For no apparent reason, Kyle will not open up the safe to give the robbers the $100,000 they demand. He tries to outwit the robbers (which isn’t very hard, because they appear to be dumb as bricks, giving their captives numerous openings for escape) in order to keep his family alive. But then there’s a twist, and it seems Kyle may not have any money at all – much to his wife’s surprise. The robbers want cash, then they want diamonds, then they want a kidney, and then one of them just wants to take Nicole Kidman and whisk her away to some blue collar paradise.
Kidman’s role is mostly comprised of screaming, crying and strange devotion to her husband despite his exasperatingly bad decisions – oh, and she may have had an affair with one of the robbers. The robbers are brutish cartoons; they don’t seem to get anything right and there are higher powers that control them. Cage also screams a good deal, as usual, and speaks very quickly to explain lots of complicated things about diamonds. Even the daughter, whose methods of escape have a glimmer of cunning, continues to dumbly wind right back at the house in the middle of the action.
One of the redeeming qualities of the film is how Kidman still looks fabulous even when she’s screaming, covered in blood, and her hair is all over the place. On another, one of the robbers adds comic relief as she prances around the bedroom while smoking crack.
The cinematography is elegant and the long, beautiful shots of the house and the flashbacks of a lonely Kidman with the toned robber by the pool are striking images.
There is some merit to Trespass in how it brings the ‘thriller’ back into a human realm. There may be some insanity, but at its core, Trespass is a film about the test of man’s character in the face of invasion, with the threat of death looming.
But it becomes increasingly hard to care about what happens to any of these characters, because the plot just keeps shifting again, and again. The real suspense comes when you think it’s going to end – and it doesn’t.
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