Nicolas Cage is let off the leash to play a tic-infested con artist with an obsessive-compulsive disorder, a phobia for dirt and the outdoors, a mania for canned tuna. Frisking and frolicking to keep pace are Alison Lohman as the teenage daughter he never knew he had, and Sam Rockwell as his loosey-goosey partner in crime. It would all be intolerably annoying except that director Ridley Scott, while exercising no control over his actors, keeps a close watch on their surroundings, playing tirelessly with light and shadow, picking out microscopic details, catching reflections in glass, and generally giving you a lot to look at apart from the three overactors. (He gives you a lot to listen to as well: a wall-to-wall songtrack heavy on Sinatra and his peers.) Instead, it becomes intolerably annoying only after you have come through the snarl of plot twists toward the end and can look back in righteous indignation at where you have been. Bruce McGill, Bruce Altman. (2003) — Duncan Shepherd
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