The setting: a major hotel casino. Homicide detective Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage) excitedly attends a big heavyweight showdown with his best bud, Major Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise), a Washington yes-man assigned to protect Kirkland, the Secretary of Defense (Joel Fabiani), who has a seat in the second row. As a buxom blonde (Carla Gugino) quietly converses with Kirkland, the fighter (Stan Shaw) is knocked down for the first time in his career, and sniper shots are simultaneously fired into the crowd. An assassin is immediately caught, but not before Kirkland has expired and his mystery woman (farsighted and bereft of her specs) has escaped in the ensuing stampede. Santoro initiates an investigation, his detective work consisting mostly of screaming at people until they can't take it anymore. (He is the verbal parallel to the boxer in the picture.)

Don't let Snake Eyes' Rashomon-style structure fool you into believing this assassination tale is heavier than the average episode of "Vega$". Snake Eyes reveals its baddies early on, though flashbacks and long-winded exposition continue throughout: we're shown the solution to the puzzle and then asked to suffer through the construction of it. Start at the conclusion of Snake Eyes and work backwards and the result is pretty much the same, a film with an intricate but unenlightening structure. Virtually every character echoes the hurricane that's brewing outside the casino doors: red herrings, all. (And yes, the ending is implausible, as is much of the dialogue. Such lines as, "You're a number-cruncher; just crunch the goddamn numbers!" drop from Cage's mouth like lead balloons.)

In his book If They Move, Kill 'Em: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah, biographer David Weddle grappled with the issue of style versus imitation. Endless praise was heaped upon Peckinpah for his groundbreaking editing style and powerful use of symbolic imagery in The Wild Bunch. Weddle theorizes that in his later films, as his mind and body deteriorated, Peckinpah merely aped what worked in Bunch whether or not it was organic to the story. Indeed, when Billy the Kid strikes a Christ pose for arresting officers in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, it is a memorable yet inappropriate image. (Unlike, say, the bloody Angel pleading for mercy in The Wild Bunch.)

Brian DePalma, too, falls back on the same visual motifs movie after movie. In watching Snake Eyes a second time on DVD, I very carefully considered the director's by-now patented approach, his obvious nods to Hitchcock aside. The extended tracking shot that opens Snake Eyes (after a brief mock-news report) is impressive, but is it really that much cooler than the first sequence of his infamous Bonfire of the Vanities? (Note: at home, one is able to discern a few of the well-concealed cuts in Snake Eyes' aforementioned long take.) A split-screen sequence is also terrific--and similar to the prom-anarchy of Carrie or Blow Out's title sequence. (Likewise, the gooey music cues that sound up whenever our Snake Eyes heroine appears on screen are straight out of Blow Out, arguably DePalma's best picture.* Come to think of it, the casino pursuit in Snake Eyes might also have been cribbed from Blow Out--it's very similar to the latter's climactic subway chase.)

I would consider none of this negative were Snake Eyes a solid flick. DePalma applies his best techniques to a script that it is generally undeserving. Allow me to expand on Weddle's argument: Peckinpah tried his damnedest to make the atrocious Convoy a Peckinpah adventure when he really shouldn't have bothered with it all. Tony Scott cribs from himself often; consider, for example, his bizarre Revenge: the best scene in that movie is a jet cruise straight out of his Top Gun. Similarly, DePalma's pet standards are the star of Snake Eyes but overly familiar and thus incapable of elevating the film above mere diversion.

Ultimately, I believe that filmmakers develop a grab-bag of "tricks" to which they eventually resort because they're just that: tricks. What is "style" but conscious imitation of the successful self? And Snake Eyes is unmistakably DePalma's child, demonstrative of the best he's offered us in the past. It would be nice, however, to see him apply his wizardry (for lack of a better word) to material worthier than this rickety corruption thriller.

Paramount continues to impress me with their DVDs. Snake Eyes' digital transfer is almost as nice to stare at as The Truman Show's. Presented letterboxed at 2.35:1 (alas, not 16x9 enhanced--though I received a press release today which indicates that many future Paramount discs will be), the image is colour-perfect and incredibly clear. Some have said that Snake Eyes looks edge-enhanced, causing white outlines on characters and objects in certain scenes. This was not noticeable on my 32", Video Essentials-calibrated television, and I suspect turning down your monitor's sharpness setting will eliminate or greatly reduce this problem. However, because I was so closely inspecting the screen for "ringing," I caught some artifacts on Tyler the champ's blue bathrobe: the terrycloth material must have been hell for the compression artists, because it appears to freeze at times. There are also a few minor cases of shimmering, especially on the boardroom table during a hush-hush conversation between Dunne and Santoro.

The accompanying sound is flawless. Presented in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 (with 2.0 the default), the mix is as active as Stephen H. Burum's camerawork. Indeed, the film deserved an Oscar nomination for its multi-layered sound design. Even the quietest effects, like a ringing cell phone, can be distinguished during the boxing match. The rear channels kick in frequently, most dazzlingly when we're seeing the action from a character's POV (point of view) and his/her voice comes from behind us. The rolling thunder of the storm rumbles deep, reaching impressively low frequencies.

Extras include a trailer and scene selection. The menus are not animated, and the studio has been thrifty with the number of chapters.-Bill Chambers

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