by Brendan Foley
The Trust, new to Blu-ray and DVD, is a solid small-scale thriller that goes about its business with little wasted fat. It’s a two-hander that puts two well-established personas in a big, tense situation, and lets the audience watch everyone sweat it out for ninety minutes. So if Nic Cage being a wild-eyed madman while Elijah Wood reacts with wide (WIDE) eyed disbelief sounds like a good time to you, you’re in good hands.
Cage and Wood play forensic detectives with the Las Vegas police department. They hate their jobs, hate their lives, hate pretty much everything except each other, and even their friendship seems based more on lack of options than true warmth.
Plot wheels start turning when Cage stumbles over a nobody drug runner who was released on an exorbitant bail, paid in cash. He sends Wood to investigate and they turn up a dingy, disused warehouse that houses a safe containing wealth beyond their wildest dreams. The dirty duo then set out to break into the safe and claim its content for themselves.
It’s a simple enough set-up, but you don’t sit down with The Trust because you’re interested in the procedural intricacies of safe-cracking. We have Thief for that, thank you very much.
No, the question you had when you saw Nic Cage and Nic Cage’s mustache is, “Is this crazy committed to his own loopiness Nic Cage, or collecting a paycheck Nic Cage?” I’m happy to report that Cage is giving one of those deeply committed nutter-butter performances that only he would ever pull off, or even try. He’s not at full-tile “HOWDITGETBURNED?!?!” crazy, but he fleshes out his Generic Scumbag Cop with eccentricities that make the character feel so much more memorable than it had to be. I’m sure at least some of those details started out in the script, but Cage takes them and just runs with it.
At one pont he’s interrogating a prisoner at gunpoint and he starts to sing the questions. There’s one bit where they’re outdoors and Cage is just lathering his nose with sunscreen the whole time they’re talking about thievery. That’s where we’re at.
Also Jerry Lewis plays his dad in like two scenes. I don’t get it either.
The script also does a clever thing relatively early on, revealing Cage’s character to be waaaaaaay more cold-blooded than originally advertised. It transforms a clown into a shark, suggesting that every goofy twitch and tic isn’t just Cage showing off or entertaining himself, but that these mannerisms are the result of a broken man play-acting at being a complete human. Maybe a better film would have dug into this a little deeper, but The Trust is stripped to the bone and constantly pushes forward, leaving some of these interesting notes left unplayed.
Elijah Wood’s deadpan is second-to-none, as anyone who watched Wilfred can tell you. Wood remains a terrific actor to watch react, to watch think. Many of The Trust’s biggest laughs come from just watching this guy slowly realize how terrible the situation he has stumbled into really is, and that all comes back to Wood being totally present in the moment with Cage. The two have solid chemistry, strong enough that I hope to see them paired together again at some point.
Directors Alex Brewer and Ben Brewer (directing a script by Ben and Adam Hirsch) keep things moving at a steady clip, their camerawork remaining energetic without pushing into annoying. The Brewers have a strong visual sense and solid comic timing, showing a knack for how to use the camera to help sell a gag or punctuate a laugh or a shocking moment of violence. The Trust has fun with the inherent sleaze of Las Vegas, with the script packing a nihilistic touch to underpin the broader beats of the story.
The Trust feels like the kind of movie that, were it made in the 70s, it would pop up on TCM every so often in conjunction with something like The Seven-Ups or Across 110th Street. And you would watch it and be impressed by the blunt violence and sex, the intimate scale, and the shocking finality of the ending. If it was made in the 90s it would be on TNT every goddamn day after Rounders. It is just one of those engaging little thrillers that comes in, does the dirty job, and then gets off the stage quick before wearing out its welcome.
It’s a solid start for the Brewers as filmmakers, and I’ll be very curious to see how they grow and evolve with their craft. They certainly deserve a shot.
The Trust hit Blu-ray & DVD August 2nd from Lionsgate Home Entertainment.
