A husband, wife, and daughter are kidnapped and held for ransom in their swanky abode. Said kidnappers need a lot of moolah to pay off a debt. No this isn't the flick Trespass with Ice T from 30 years back. This is 2011's Trespass starring Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, and a very rattled Ben Mendelsohn (what else is new).
So yeah, one character in Trespass says "open the safe" about a million times, like there's some screenwriter out there who couldn't think of anything else to dash off. Trespass, well it may be the title of my latest review but it could be easily renamed "Impasse", as in virtually no headway.
Taking place in Louisiana, uninspired, and distributed by Entertainment One (that's debatable), Trespass is bad, like bile in your mouth bad. It's a home invasion conch that goes on and on and on, draining any tension you might have thought you had at the beginning of watching it.
Sure Nic Cage as family man Kyle Miller is reliable and Kidman as his wife (Sarah Miller) does an okay job of acting afraid and cowed, but then there's the bad guys, the antagonists, bickering and yelling and botching the job and getting more doltish as time marches on. They probably could've offed the hostages and just searched ye olde mansion for anything of value but no, they have to explain everything and intimidate and never shut the f up. There's a saying you know, it's that "overexposure kills you". Natch.
Trespass, well it's directed by the late Joel Schumacher, a man who never saw a weird camera angle, a cheesy zoom, or an awkward flashback he didn't like. Besides 2000's Tigerland and Phone Booth, there has never been a film of his I can really get on board with (and there have been over 25 of them). I mean the dude was one of the kings of schlock, substituting pap for art and commercial swipe for the adjective of untrammeled. His Trespass as a compact thriller is uh, "criminally" mundane.
Written by Jesse Burleson
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