Joel Schumacher seems to have lost the ability to produce anything but noise. With Twelve he proved that even with a diverse cast of teenagers that he could transform their struggle within a drug-addled social sphere into a bland, over-produced quagmire, and now he’s shown us in Trespass that when he has a story filled with adrenaline and high stakes that he can drain it of immediacy and render it a limp and loud mess. Even Nicole Kidman couldn’t save Trespass from dwindling into pointless melodrama, and any entertainment value the overacting of Nicolas Cage should have added never shows up on the screen. Somehow Schumacher robbed its leads of their most valuable assets, and then did the same to the script, stripping away any surprises and opting instead for lots of shouting and an endless back-and-forth hostage power struggle. You’d do well to avoid Schumacher’s latest blunder.
Kyle (Cage) provides for his wife Sarah (Kidman) and daughter Avery (Liana Liberato), giving them a luxurious home and nice cars, but his job as a middle man brokering highly lucrative exchanges of commodities leaves him a bit distracted. It also puts his family at risk. One fateful night, a couple of thieves (Cam Gigandet, Ben Mendelsohn) break in, armed with guns, demanding access to the safe where they have it on good authority a collection of diamonds is waiting to be handed off in Kyle’s next business deal. Exactly how the thieves know this or why they need the money or how they were able to get past the family’s expensive security system are mysteries whose answers begin to surface as the situation heats to a boil.
What’s remarkable about Trespass is that it actually makes you wish the writer had deleted the twist written in every ten pages and just made a very contained and intense hostage drama, because what we get instead is a story that attempts to “reveal” something new every few minutes only to be entirely predictable in its revelations by the second time around and then every time after. Unfortunately, to get to each new plot point, you have to sit through a bunch of senseless yelling and posturing that never feels threatening or as intense as Schumacher must have intended. The whole situation feels tepid, as if he never realized that yelling and punching don’t create tension, conflict between characters does—and there’s a shocking absence of that despite being a hostage situation.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Beyond being a combo pack that includes the film on Blu-ray, DVD, and as a digital copy, Trespass has no extra features to speak of.
"Trespass" is on sale November 1, 2011 and is rated R. Crime, Drama, Thriller. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Written by Karl Gajdusek. Starring Ben Mendelsohn, Cam Gigandet, Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, Liana Liberato.
