Nicolas Cage and Elijah Wood play bad cop, not-quite-as-bad-but-still-bad cop in Alex Brewer and Ben Brewer’s crime thriller, The Trust.
Disillusioned by life on the force, Lieutenant Jim Stone (Cage) sees his big pay in robbing the very drug dealers that keep him so busy. Using his vacation days to tail a local dealer, he discovers where the gang’s stash house is located, and after acquiring the blueprints from a local planning office to get the location of the vault, brings in colleague David Waters (Wood) to rob the lot.
Needless to say, the bungling cops try their damnedest to mess things up. When they discover the apartment above the safe is occupied they have to take two hostages, then in a struggle one of them dies, and the process of drilling into the safe is arduous to say the least. They realise too, that if they do make it in, the gang will be on their back who are a whole lot more proficient in their actions.
The Trust is filled with black humour and the off-kilter dynamic between Cage and Wood carries the film a fair way, even if the former is largely dialling it in. Throw the excellent Sky Ferreira’s into the mix too, and the film does start to pick up the pace.
But the initial promise and personality fall flat towards the end. In a series of telegraphed plot twists, the finale will did more to frustrate than to fulfill, and it feels like a get out because the writing team couldn’t think of anything better.
The Trust is a passable and entertaining crime thriller, with a fair few laughs, but it all feels disposable, and the frustrating ending comes d angerously close to undermining any positives. Sky Ferreira comes out of the film with credit, but for Cage and Wood, they might be running out of chances to kick start their career.