All bets are off when shady homicide cop Rick Santoro witnesses a murder during a boxing match. Determined to solve the crime, he quickly learns that his search for answers will only uncover yet more questions in an ever-widening web of conspiracy, intrigue, and danger.
Snake Eyes is showing in 1 cinema in Los Angeles — next screening Sunday 26 July at 16:15 at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Downtown Los Angeles.
Find more films like Snake Eyes
Showtimes in your city.
There's one scene where Gary Sinise is outside a hotel room and the camera cranes up, looking down at him"Please let this shot move over the wall into the next room," I think.Then the camera goes over the wall and moves through FOUR rooms in the same shotThank you De Palma
Brian De Palma's follow-up to the biggest studio hit of his career Mission Impossible is another David Koepp penned pop thriller set in the insular, corrupt and glitzy world of the casino (I've always thought De Palma was maybe a little jealous of his pals Scorsese/De Niro and wanted to take his own stab at it), with Cage as a sleazy, swagged out, snakeskin suit attired homicide cop who witnesses a high-profile political assassination during a boxing match (in a wild Touch of Evil-esque oner mini-masterpiece) and spirals his way through a larger, literal blood money military industrial complex conspiracy as a murder mystery/single location thriller blown up to a much larger, spectacled stage. And while it doesn't quite have the level of off-the-charts depressed obsessiveness and tragic romance of something like Blow Out, this is a very good, lavishly made studio pulp thriller from big Brian that he snuck a few pet obsessions into: voyeurism, surveillance, political conspiracy, etc. He even managed two of the ‘Hitchcock detective following a beautiful woman in a disguise’ sequences, and a depiction of American foreign policy as a mechanized casino game everyone is trying to perform in and rig in their favor (including weapons contractors staging false flag Palestinian terror attacks to boost their sales to Israel!), that he then translates into a larger idea about complex systems of orchestrated spectacle and perception and illusion as both genre tools and political ones. An idea De Palma realizes with his commanding and dynamic visual maximalism (designed to manically replicate Cage's mind but also his sense of confidence and control over his "sewer" kingdom): so many screens, cameras, first person, overhead and POV tracking Steadicam maneuvers, split screens/diopters, and several Rashomon memory/perspective flashbacks, etc. (Shoutout to Cage and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto who, even though this was only the first time they worked with De Palma, plug into and elevate his brand of elegant bombast quite well too.) It's a hell of a formally controlled suspense magic trick of a movie that suggests institutional corruption is an act of betrayal, not unlike the brain corrupting the information your eyes provide it with; it's no accident that cameras are the prevailing truth seer (sayer?) of the film's events. The only real issue for me is that it simply can't maintain it for the entire runtime, and once it loses some of its motion and needs to slow down and start making its reveals and wrapping up its plot it gets a little bit more narratively uneven and traditional. And like De Palma himself, I do wish they kept the original ending of the entire casino getting washed away by the hurricane... The image of a hawkish naval officer shooting himself on the news is a nasty one that I like, but based on how hard he goes depicting this world of overwhelming and powerful systemic corruption early in the film, he was right that the only answer that feels big and cathartic enough would be to have God wipe everything and start over.Full discussion on ep 252 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.
70/100Crazy Cage and De Palma on full thriller mode; a Scooby-Doo conspiracy ride living off of exaggerated thunder claps and those oh so glorious De Palma flourishes. Pure and entrancing.
A corrupt homicide detective investigates a political assassination that he witnesses firsthand at a championship boxing match.
Brian De Palma directed the film in 1998, a director celebrated for his distinctive use of long takes and suspenseful camera work.
We use cookies to personalize your experience and analyze traffic. You can opt out at any time.
