PLOT: Following a tragedy, a grieving husband (Nicolas Cage) and wife (Robin Tunney) invest their life-savings in a quiet motel. Soon, the husband discovers that one of the rooms has a hidden passage and a two-way mirror, turning him into a voyeur.
REVIEW: For better or worse, Nicolas Cage is nothing if not prolific. Quite far-removed from his A-list Hollywood days, Cage, nevertheless, is still bankable to the extent that he’s enough to get low-budget genre entries made, and these tend to be about fifty-fifty as to whether they’re disposable or not. That’s far better than a lot of his former A-list contemporaries are doing with folks like John Cusack and Bruce Willis stuck in the same boat. Cage seems to have a lot of sense as to what’s worth doing or not, and in interesting films like DOG EAT DOG, MOM & DAD, and MANDY, he’s as good as he’s ever been. It’s a tribute to his professionalism though that even in junk like U.S.S INDIANAPOLIS he never phones it in too badly, although it’s painful to watch him in things like that (or the dismal looking, soon-to-be-released HUMANITY BUREAU).
LOOKING GLASS could have been one of those more interesting entries, having a solid pedigree with RIVER’S EDGE director Tim Hunter on-board, but despite admirable performances by Cage and co-star Robin Tunney, this is only slightly removed from the level of late night nineties skin-e-max movies. Had this been made in 1995, it would have starred Andrew Stevens and Shannon Tweed. There’s more sex than usual for a Cage movie, with the plot revolving around him watching a dominatrix (who – natch – happens only to pull in drop-dead gorgeous, young, female customers). It’s very silly, and even the perverse aspect of Cage being a voyeur isn’t taken anywhere interesting, a surprise given Hunter’s involvement, despite some decent looney-tunes acting by Cage (a bar-room freak-out seems to have been thrown in just to pacify fans).
Once the mystery kicks in, LOOKING GLASS becomes old hat, although I’ll give the creative department some credit for Marc Blucas as the good-old-boy sheriff, who’s played with a few screws loose, seeming like the writers and Blucas had a little fun with the part. Robin Tunney also gives her character some real pathos, but she’s too good for the material.
LOOKING GLASS never comes close to giving Cage a solid indie thriller in the vein of RED ROCK WEST, which is a shame as he could still nail such a part and it could probably be done on the cheap. Had this had more class and style, LOOKING GLASS could have been that kind of movie. Instead, it’s just disposable junk that’s nowhere near as perverse and lewd as it thinks it is.