Review: Trespass

Diamond broker Nic Cage (!), wife Nicole Kidman, and rebellious teen daughter Liana Liberato find themselves the victim of a home invasion. Four masked robbers (Ben Mendelsohn, Cam Gigandet, Dash Mihok, and Jordana Spiro) gain access to the house by pretending to be cops. They want money or anything of value...like diamonds, perhaps? And believe me, they’re not fucking around. Mendelsohn is the no-nonsense leader, Mihok is the threatening muscle (his name isn’t Raoul, but it might as well be), Spiro the token trashy moll, and Gigandet is the guy who installed the family’s alarm system, which Kidman soon realises. But is there more than this initial recognition going on between the two?

 

How does a film starring Nic Cage, Nicole Kidman, Cam Gigandet (ugh!) and Ben Mendelsohn, and directed by Joel Schumacher (“The Lost Boys”, “The Client”, “Blood Creek”, “Tigerland”), barely get a theatrical release in the US and go straight-to-DVD in Australia? There are two reasons. 1) It was released by Millennium Films, and any film from them starring well-known A-list actors will not be doing much box-office (“88 Minutes”, anyone?), and 2) It sucks, which is why everyone except Millennium clearly passed on it and why it broke the record for fastest transition from cinema to DVD in the US (Beating out “From Justin to Kelly”- Ouch!). A mixture of “Hostage” and the Spanish home invasion flick “Kidnapped”, it’s boring and clichéd, and pretty poorly acted all round. But when your film stars Nic Cage, and the worst male actor in the world not named Nic Cage, Cam Gigandet, you can probably already guess that. The two surprises here are Aussies Nicole Kidman and Ben Mendelsohn. What in the hell are one of the world’s biggest stars and one of Australia’s most respected actors doing in junk like this? Cage, I can understand because he was in Schumacher’s rather unpleasant snuff/revenge movie “8MM”, but these two? Holy crap. About the only good thing I can say about Kidman here is that this is the first time she’s looked like a real-life human being in ages. It’s obvious that she’s had work done, but thanks mostly to (I assume) cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak (“Power”, “Falling Down”, “Thirteen Days”), her cheeks don’t look as porcelain as they usually do. And she’s all the hotter for it, for the first time since “To Die For” I actually found her attractive (In fact, the cinematography is the film’s only asset. It’s a crisp, clean-looking film). As for her performance, she’s...OK, and probably one of the least sucky things about the film, though she only has one acting requirement in the film; Look terrified. Still, why would she choose this trash to appear in?

 

Ben Mendelsohn is even more disappointing. After terrific work in “Animal Kingdom”, you’d think his career in the US would finally take off. Instead, here he is an a simplistic home invasion movie, and a boring one at that. I actually found myself for the first twenty minutes wondering who this crap actor was under the mask and was genuinely shocked to realise it was Mendelsohn. He’s appallingly bad, hideously overacting in a film that already features Nic Cage and Cam Gigandet. How is it possible that in a film with these three actors, it’s Ben Freakin’ Mendelsohn who delivers the worst performance? Oh don’t get me wrong, Gigandet and Cage are plenty bad, too. In fact, Cage should never play a nerd again, because after “The Rock” and now this, he’s proven himself entirely incompetent at such roles. He mercilessly chews the scenery (throws it up and then chews it again, to be honest) here in his worst performance since “Face/Off”. Why make such a bugged-out uber- pussy our hero? Damn, I’d started to warm to the guy in recent years (“Con Air”, “Bringing Out the Dead”, “Ghost Rider”, “Knowing”, “Lord of War”, “Kick Ass”) but he’s laughably bad here, reminiscent of the bad old times (“Peggy Sue Got Married”, “Raising Arizona”, “Vampire’s Kiss”, “Deadfall”, “Kiss of Death”, etc). Surely he’s not serious here, right? I guess Cage and Mendelsohn can’t take all of the blame, the script is simplistic and clichéd, so perhaps they were overcompensating for how inert it all is. Meanwhile, is it really a good idea to have Cam Gigandet wear a mask for most of the film when he has only one facial expression in his repertoire and no other acting skills to call upon as compensation? The guy’s awful, though it doesn’t help that his relationship with Kidman is poorly developed too.

 

The screenplay by Karl Gajdusek (“Oblivion”, TV’s “Dead Like Me”) has lots of twists and turns and stories that change, but none of it is remotely interesting. This was probably never going to be great, given the participation of Schumacher, Cage, and Gigandet, but I was still shocked at just how bad it is. It’s definitely one of the director’s worst films, along with “Falling Down”. It also contains more heavy breathing than in some pornos. Or so I’ve heard. Anyway, just watch “Panic Room” again instead.

 

Rating: C-