"Trespass" Review

Peruse the shelves of your video store - whoops, I'm showing my age, I mean browse Netflix - and you'll see loads of movies starring Big Name Movie Stars that you've never heard of. I'm not talking Wesley Snipes either. How does a movie starring a pair of Academy Award-winners, directed by the generally competent Joel Schumacher get dumped straight to video and VOD? How did producers spend an estimated $35 million producing a movie to gross about $16,000 in theaters? Is Trespass - no relation to the Ice-T/Ice Cube flick from the early-Nineties - really that terrible?

No, but it doesn't mean it's all that good. Nicolas "Will meals be provided?" Cage and Nicole Kidman star as a rich couple with a minor problem. No, not their cherry bomb teen daughter who wants to go to a party but the gang of masked gunmen who want the millions in diamonds and/or cash they believe are in the safe. Hijinks ensue and by hijinks I mean lots of yelling and screaming and injury and yelling and screaming and "shocking" plot twists. Oh, and more yelling and screaming.

The script relies too much on red herrings and revelations to keep things moving, but by the end there have been a few too many double-crosses and crazy people delusions to keep things grounded. (On further reflection I realized that one revelation moots a whole bunch of other stuff they've shown us, so I'm not really sure what the heck was happening and I'm wondering if the filmmakers knew either?)

Schumacher hustles everything along and it's only 90 minutes or so, but at it's core, if it had less swearing and starred Ashley Judd and Bruce Boxleitner, it could've been a Lifetime movie. Cage's readiness to make anything for a check is legendary, but what was the attraction to Kidman? Did she see this as her chance to make a Panic Room, the movie she started shooting and had to drop out of after being injured early in shooting and being replaced by Jodie Foster? What happened to her career? She still looks good; can't Julianne Moore spare a part for her?

Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable.