"AN INTERESTING CAT-AND-MOUSE TAKE ON THE CONSPIRACY CONCEPT"
Collider's Daniel Cruse's post yesterday about Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes has the headline, "Nicolas Cage Is a Crooked Cop Hunting a Killer in This Bonkers, Overlooked Brian De Palma Thriller." Here's an excerpt:
De Palma's greatest thrillers take after Hitchcock in premise and execution, but they often also reveal wide-spanning political conspiracies that feel more in line with the works of Alan J. Pakula. Pakula directed a trilogy of films about political conspiracies; Klute, All the President's Men, and The Parallax View. Snake Eyes most closely echoes The Parallax View, another movie about an assassinated political figure, and a man tasked with uncovering the shadowy network of people responsible.Snake Eyes is an interesting cat-and-mouse take on the conspiracy concept, as De Palma and David Koepp's script reveals the main perpetrator to the audience fairly early on, while keeping Cage's character in the dark. This reveal ramps up the tension of the remaining sequences, as the two characters frequently come into close contact, with Santoro unaware of the immediate danger being posed to him as he closes in on the mystery. This choice attracted some criticism at the time, with people feeling that Snake Eyes ran out of steam by the end because of the choice to give away the resolution so early. In an episode of Mark Cousins' Scene by Scene for BBC, De Palma talked about this choice, explaining that the film fundamentally is not about the reveal and instead about "how finding that out affects their relationship."
One trick De Palma uses to keep Snake Eyes fresh throughout the runtime, even after the reveal, is that the movie will cut back to scenes we already saw from Santoro's point of view, but from another perspective. Around a corner, or behind a door that was closed as Santoro walked by, we realize another character was already in place, plotting something or narrowly evading a blown cover. De Palma makes great use of recurring sequences to slowly give out more information, something he also does in Blow Out when John Travolta's character obsessively re-listens to his audio recording to piece together his own mystery.
When everything comes together in Snake Eyes, it may feel a bit too convoluted on first viewing, but De Palma's choice to lay the story out as he did makes it far easier to appreciate on repeat viewings. The film received mixed reviews at the time, but it is one of De Palma's most thrilling and entertaining efforts, reinforcing his mastery of cinematic and visually striking thrillers. Nobody makes them quite like him.
