Trespass
Time Out New York Project: Issue #832, October 13-19, 2011
★★☆☆☆
Dir. Joel Schumacher. 2011. R. 91mins. Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, Cam Gigandet, Ben Mendelsohn.
You’ve seen Nicolas Cage flex his Bruckheimer-enhanced muscles and stare down an iguana for Herzog; now this fearless national treasure goes full nerd for Joel Schumacher’s jacked-up joke of a thriller. He’s the jowly, bespectacled Kyle — hustle-for-a-living diamond specialist, milquetoast husband to bored wife Sarah (Kidman), ineffective father of a rebellious teen daughter (Liana Liberato). And he gets quite the surprise one evening when some cops investigating a rash of robberies in his posh neighborhood turn out to be members of a gang who demand the gems in his swanky wall safe. Just give them what they want and they’ll go away.
“Not the bees!!!” replies Kyle. Okay, not really. Aside from one classic Cage outburst (“No! No!! No!!!…No!”), his overacting eminence is in relatively subdued form. Scenery-chewing duties are ceded to Ben Mendelsohn as the annoyingly high-strung lead thief — his long-winded threats come off like first-year acting-school monologues — whose reasons for choosing this house and this family slowly come to light over a very long hour and a half. There are a few hilariously gauzy flashbacks to one of the bad guys (Gigandet) casing the locale and seducing La Kidman with his flawless pecs. (As proved here and in Burlesque, the Camster does his best work topless.) And there’s some small vengeful pleasure to be had when Kyle makes cringingly Straw Dogs–ian use of a nail gun. Otherwise, Trespass is assembly-line product through and through — unabashedly mediocre and instantly forgettable. A Joel Schumacher joint, in other words.—Keith Uhlich
