#029 - Snake Eyes (1998)
Hello and welcome to my weblog. On Friday evening, some friends surprised me with a screening of Snake Eyes (1998).
In the opening shot of the film, a news anchor establishes that there is a hurricane descending on Atlantic City. I can think of two other Nic Cage movies offhand with a hurricane - Grand Isle and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - and I suspect there may be others I haven’t seen yet.
Hurricanes are the maximal event in American life: they displace hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans each year and while we can try to predict them and track them, all we can really do is try to get people out of their way. If it hasn’t happened to you, then you know someone who has been displaced or been left without power or water after a storm. You’ll find different accounts online of how we came to give tropical storms and hurricanes names but the practice must have been born from a fearful respect of their terrible power. How could you not give a name to something that causes so much destruction?
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Nic Cage is in so many hurricane movies; I think if you’re trying to portray a terrifying force of nature, you’d do well to hire Mr. Cage.
This movie has both a hurricane and Nic Cage because this movie is Very Intense. I hope that you have not seen this movie so that I can recommend it to you. It was a delight and it was full of many turns that I could not have expected. Thank you again to bcj, Casey, and Allison for watching this with me on Discord.