In Cinemas: Trespass tries to tackle high-brow subjects with action

A domestic disaster which relies on ridiculous plot twists to make up for deficiencies in performances and plot.

Ben Mendelsohn, left, Nicole Kidman and Nicolas Cage in Trespass. Courtesy Millennium Entertainment
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Director: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, Cam Gigandet
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Movies this bad have a certain risible cachet (you have to see them to believe them). As with watching a car crash, audiences will find it hard to take their eyes off Schumacher's attempt to make a thriller about the futility of materialism and infidelity. Twenty years ago, it would have been hard to imagine the Gremlins director and the actors Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman going anywhere near this domestic disaster, which relies on ridiculous plot twists to make up for deficiencies in performances and plot.

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Cage plays the diamond dealer Kyle Wheeler, a poor father and an even poorer husband who lets his architect wife Sarah (Kidman) cook dinner before he reveals he's heading out on business. Meanwhile, their daughter Avery (Liana Liberato) sneaks out through a window to a party. Before Kyle can leave the house, a team of crooks led by Ben Mendelsohn and Cam Gigandet bursts in, demanding money and diamonds. Unluckily for them, Kyle is not scared, trying to reason with the robbers that stealing uncut diamonds is tricky. Then things get truly preposterous with countless bizarre chases around the house. No one comes out of this film with any credit: Schumacher's decline as a director continues (remarkably, he has managed to make a film that is worse than his last effort, Twelve); Kidman's performance suggests that her days of winning Oscars are probably over; and it is all topped off with Cage overacting at every opportunity.