The Trust

Eli­jah Wood spends most of The Trust sport­ing a facial expres­sion some­where between bemused and hor­ri­fied. Con­sid­er­ing his co-star is Nico­las Cage, mas­ter of the fabled ​“nou­veau shaman­ic” act­ing tech­nique, this is under­stand­able. Take an ear­ly scene at a bar when Cage steals a lemon slice from his colleague’s glass, cov­ers it in Tabas­co and chows it down. You can’t help but won­der, was this writ­ten in the screen­play? But where oth­er direc­tors might sim­ply let the actor run ramshod for 90 min­utes, new­com­ers Alex and Ben­jamin Brew­er seem to have tried point­ing him in a straight line.

The result is a breezy heist movie not unlike its lead actor: it might veer off the straight and nar­row, but it’s nev­er dull. Cage and Wood star as Jim Stone and David Waters, Las Vegas cops who have slipped into cor­rup­tion pure­ly by dint of being too smart to sim­ply be incom­pe­tent. Through some off-the-books sleuthing and a series of dis­cov­er­ies that are nev­er quite prop­er­ly explained, they stum­ble upon evi­dence of a secret vault in the back of a con­ve­nience store which they believe to be stuffed with dirty cash. A fair­ly stan­dard prepa­ra­tion mon­tage (procur­ing tools, scout­ing out the loca­tion) is ele­vat­ed at every turn by Cage, por­ing over plans with his nose cov­ered in sun­screen, or order­ing drill bits in bro­ken German.

For most of the first act, it feels Cage-lite (think his phoned-in John­ny Blaze from Ghost Rid­er), but the Brew­ers slack­en his leash just enough to dri­ve up the ten­sion as the heist prop­er begins. The Trust may not break new ground in the genre, but it’s a hand­some­ly made exam­ple of a tried and test­ed for­mu­la. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Sean Porter eschews the gar­ish neon hues of the Vegas Strip for a cool­er colour palate, and Reza Safinia’s up-tem­po score helps to keep up the pace. Cru­cial­ly, it doesn’t out­stay its wel­come. Cast­ing Cage is a gam­ble, but the Brew­ers are wise enough to know when to walk away from the table.