Jeremy Clarke reviews

Distributed by
Pioneer Entertainment Europe

Cat.no: PLFEB 37701

Cert: 15

Running time: 95 minutes

Sides: 2 (CLV)

Year: 1998

Pressing: 1999

Chapters: 12 (7/5)

Sound: Dolby Surround

Widescreen: 2.35:1

Price: £19.99

Extras : None

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Director:

Brian De Palma

Cast:

Nicolas Cage
Gary Sinise
Stan Shaw
Carla Gugino
John Heard
Kevin Dunn

Brian De Palma's best films, in this writer's opinion, aren't his recent megabudget hits (The Untouchables, the overrated Mission: Impossible) but his earlier string of Hitchcockian thrillers (Sisters, Obsession, Dressed To Kill, Blow Out) which tend to combine fluid visual mechanics of style with guilt, vice, deception and double-cross. Snake Eyes is a half-return to form in the sense that it has little guilt or vice but plenty of deception and double-cross - not to mention oodles of style. Classic De Palma, if you will, but for the (lack of) sleaze.

Excluding the opening windowboxed (within the 2.35:1 image) footage of a TV news reporter focusing on a storm outside the Atlantic City hotel/casino wherein the action mostly takes place, the fifteen minute opening shot (which runs a curious 2½ chapters) follows loud-jacketed, not entirely on the level cop Rick Santoro (Cage) as he holds a number of conversations with characters on his mobile phone or present in and around the hotel/casino's boxing arena before finally joining old friend and military brass in charge of security Kevin Dunne (Sinise) at the ringside, noticing a suspect redhead, watching the fighter Tyler (Shaw) take a dive, hearing the crowds roar and seeing the Secretary Of Defence shot down at the ringside as the blonde (Gugino) who's just sat down in the seat next to Santoro hands something to the Secretary.

For the remainder, the cop catches up with Tyler, the blonde (who turns out to have been wearing a wig) and Dunne, who tell him (and show us in flashback) their side of the story. Or lie - as Santoro discovers watching various security camera recordings of events. Perhaps the most startling moment comes when he stops the girl's flashback in mid-flow to tell her, "that couldn't be right."

Visually and aurally, it's as dense a film as De Palma's ever made. The sound of a storm outside the casino (building to a hurricane throughout the proceedings) is impressive, as is Ryuichi Sakamoto's magnificently brooding score, but the visuals are much more so - most noticeably the opening unbroken take, the lavish labyrinth of hotel corridors through which Cage and Sinise hunt for the blonde and a superb sequence where the camera unexpectedly tracks (in overhead shot) across five hotel room suites and their adjoining walls revealing the occupants within. If not ultimately his finest film, it at does at least resemble Blow Out in genre being a conspiracy thriller. But the latter was a lot more perverse (and enjoyable), whereas this nineties variant, while technically peerless, is squeaky clean by comparison (despite several hints that it's going to be anything but in the opening reel).

Pioneer's PAL disc mostly does Snake Eyes justice - it's a film unwatchable in anything other than 2.35:1 widescreen since De Palma constantly uses the complete letterbox area, even resorting in chapter 8 to his trademark split screen device. The sidebreak is in a sensible place too, coming after the lengthy hotel corridor/rooms sequence, which a break would have disrupted both in terms of flow and a wonderful section of Sakamoto's score.

Side two, the girl's testimony, starts off in a stairwell, which makes sense. More chapters would, however, have been nice given it's a film from which on occasion you're likely to want to watch individual scenes. Finally, there's no hidden trailer in the closing chapter as has been the case with a number of recent Pioneer/Buena Vista releases - a great pity in this instance, as the trailer was, I recall, rather good.

Film: 5/5
Picture: 5/5
Sound: 5/5

Review copyright © Jeremy Clarke, 1999.