Trespass

Directed by Joel Schumacher, Trespass details the chaos that ensues after masked assailants break into a wealthy couple’s (Nicolas Cage’s Kyle and Nicole Kidman’s Sarah) opulent country estate – with the film subsequently revolving around the ongoing battle of wills that ensues between the various characters. There’s little doubt that Trespass starts out with a fair amount of promise, as Schumacher does a decent job of exploiting the movie’s inherently engrossing premise – with the watchable vibe heightened by Cage’s typically idiosyncratic turn as the film’s off-kilter protagonist. (Kidman, on the other hand, delivers a bland performance that is, for the most part, echoed in the less-than-engrossing work from her villainous co-stars.) There does reach a point, however, at which the one-note nature of Karl Gajdusek’s script becomes an insurmountable obstacle, as the majority of Trespass‘ second half seems to involve a lot of yelling and arguing among the various characters. The increasingly stagnant atmosphere results in a lack of tension that grows increasingly problematic as time progresses, as there’s just never a point at which the viewer is able to work up any real sympathy for Kyle and Sarah’s perilous predicament. By the time the laughably overblown finale rolls around, Trespass has certainly established itself as a missed opportunity of distressing proportions – which is a shame, certainly, given how much fun Cage is clearly having here (eg his character refers to the individual intruders as, among other things, “assfuck” and “shithole”).

*1/2 out of ****