The Trust (2016)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Las Vegas police officer Stone (Nicolas Cage) stumbles across some strange paperwork, which leads him to look into a mysterious building. He soon starts to realize that there's some sort of vault inside and he talks another officer (Elijah Wood) into breaking in with him. Soon the two realize it's much bigger than they thought.
THE TRUST comes from directors Alex, Ben and Benjamin Brewer and for the most part it is an entertaining and somewhat captivating heist movie. That's not to say the film is perfect or even a good one but at the same time it's certainly worth watching as a Redbox rental or a free viewing like I did with Netflix. The film has some weak moments at the start and I'd argue some of the humor is flat but there's no question that the final forty-five minutes are very good.
As I said, the worst part of the movie was some of the strange and rather pointless black comedy at the start of the picture. At first I thought I was watching some sort of weak comedy because it was just rather annoying to say the least. Once you get to the heart of the movie, which is the actual heist, you look back at these early scenes and really have to wonder what the point of them were. Once the movie is over you've basically seen a good heist movie yet your brain remembers back to the start of the picture and it really doesn't make much sense.
I'd also say Wood's character changes throughout the film also didn't make much sense. I'm not going to go into spoilers but to say his character was a bit strange would be an understatement. With all of that said, there's no question that the final portion of this movie is very good. Once the two cops get their plan in motion we get a couple surprises along the way and I'd also argue that the drilling sequences were very well directed. Again, I'm not going to spoil how everything ends but there are some good twists that will remind you of the film noirs from the 1950s.
Both Cage and Wood are good in their roles and they certainly help keep you glued into the movie. Cage really stands out with a pretty laid back and entertaining performance, although there's one sequence where he goes ballistic like only he can. The supporting players are nice as well and we get a brief scene with Jerry Lewis. Yes, that Jerry Lewis. Technically speaking the music and cinematography are both very good and this helps THE TRUST as well.
