Devil makes work for idle hands.

Rating: 8/10 (28 June 2005)

This is a well-made and ambitious crime thriller, nicely acted and directed, and with a most unexpected ending.
I won't bother with the story since I'm sure it's been thoroughly described elsewhere.
The construction is a little complicated. Kevin Spacey, a small-time con man, is telling his story of a band of thieves and murderers to an investigator, Chaz Palminteri. The are multiple flashbacks and the transition from the present to the past isn't obvious. What I mean is, you will not see the pages flapping on a desk calendar while harp arpeggios strum in the background. Instead, there are quick cuts back and forth, sometimes with a time and date at the bottom of the screen to help orient us, and it works. We're never confused about when or where we are.
I must say, though, that the rules of film making have become a lot more, well -- relaxed over the years. Around 1950 Alfred Hitchcock was taken to task for including what critics called a "lying flashback" in "Stage Fright." They were bothered by the fact that Hitchcock used a flashback to illustrate a story being told by Richard Todd and part of the story was false, yet it still appeared in the flashback. Yes, film grammar has changed. Ain't it wonderful?
When I said the movie was ambitious I meant that it seemed to strive for a significance greater than that provided by the exploits of a handful of losers. The mysterious villain may or may not be real. He is said to rule just about the entire criminal world. There is nothing he can't or won't do. The movie conjures up Professor Moriarty -- or Macavity the Cat at the least, the Napolean of crime. "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled," says Spacey, "was convincing us that he doesn't exist."
Do the ominous shadows cast over the plot by this invocation work? Yes, kind of. We get a sense of the hopelessness of trying to pit ourselves against an irresistible power. It also drains away some of the realism that so many cop movies fuss over. If we don't believe in an arch criminal running the dark universe, then it's hard to believe the plot of this movie. In paying attention to its loftier goals the movie lacks the down-to-earth and familiar quality of stories like "L.A. Confidential."
But what the heck. It's a good movie. If it doesn't tell us too much about human nature it gives us characters we get to know a bit about, lots of colorful and well-handled action, and something of a sense of tragedy. Mephistopheles outlives everyone.