Nicolas Cage and Elijah Wood play Jim Stone and David Waters, two utterly dissatisfied cops who track down the location of a vault they intend to break into. With a female hostage (Sky Ferreira) in tow, they get to work whilst cracks continue to grow in their uneasy partnership.
A lethal combination and a superb dynamic; Cage’s bad jokes coupled with Wood’s disapproving looks make for some great moments of comedy gold. You almost miss that rickety rapport as things start to get a little more serious towards the third act of the movie. Still, all that chemistry works in a cringe worthy contrast to their onscreen characters, as never has it been more obvious that two people should not be working together, and on a heist of all things! Those who are familiar with Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno (2013) will appreciate that Sky Ferreira’s mostly mute portrayal of the female hostage is a welcome departure from the seemingly never-ending bone-dry sarcasm of her cannibal counterpart.
Sean Porter’s cinematography does a beautiful job of creating three different perspectives of the small world that suffocates these two underappreciated souls; the lonely wide shots – them against the world; the close-ups & two-shots – the world they have, the world want to escape; and the pensive scenic shots – dreaming of the day their world gets bigger. Wood’s world gets a little bigger when he feels sympathy for Sky’s female hostage, however misguided…
LAST WORDS:
It seems to me that The Trust could be another movie in a gradually growing line of crime films where I get the feeling the makers are trying their damnedest to emulate the pitch-black shenanigans of the Coen brothers’ Fargo (1996), and not quite getting there. That said, although the ending was far too abrupt, I felt the movie worked well as a whole and could stand up as its own confident piece. Most of the thanks go to the two leads; an odd pairing that, as it turns out, should’ve happened sooner. The soundtrack’s not half bad either.