I think there’s a saying about how trust has to be earned before it can be given. Or if there isn’t a saying, there should be. 

The next movie on the WATC(H) list, The Trust (2016), is a film about two corrupt cops who must learn the art of trust as they attempt a collaborative heist of a criminal vault (somewhere near the Vegas Strip). 

If you’ve already watched 72 Nicolas Cage movies (like I have) you may be wondering, “haven’t we covered this ‘bad cop’ heist thing already?” And yes, we certainly have. But before you rush to judge this film as a tired repeat, think again. To me, The Trust works because it lets quirky Cage do his oddball thing, and instead of putting him in the misfit Savior role, the film embraces him as a tragic and self-interested misfit who karma finds in the end.

As I’ve warned before, there will be spoilers below, so watch the film if you want and come back to read about it after…

The World According to Lieutenant Jim Stone

Nicolas Cage has played his fair share of cops (It Could Happen to You, World Trade Center, The Wicker Man, Snake Eyes, The Bad Lieutenant: PoCNO, The Frozen Ground) half of which were a bit shady. He’s also been in quite a few heist movies (Raising Arizona, Gone in 60 Seconds, National Treasure, Trespass, Stolen) but in this film we get him in a hybrid role of both corrupt cop and heist-meister. With his Magnum P.I. stache, Lieutenant Stone (Cage) actually looks a bit like a previous Cage portrayal, Big Daddy in Kick Ass ( a cop turned falsely accused convict turned vigilante). In an alternate-universe-sort-of-way, Stone and Big Daddy could be the same person on very different paths. 

Stone is an ambitious oddball cop, running the evidence collection unit of the Las Vegas Police Department. He oversees a spiraling younger officer, Sargent David Waters (Elijah Wood) who is recently separated from his wife, dislikes his work, and copes with troubles with frequent hookers and pot usage. 

These two evidence collectors (translated: not real cops) join a much broader network of police corruption and ineptitude. The film has a sociopath policeman who pretends to play Russian roulette as a prank, and later rolls a meth dealer for free cash. It has dispatchers who take bribes and a police captain who pulls a seized John Deere tractor from the auction floor as a gift for his son. 

In other words, from the very beginning of the film, we are being told NOT to trust the alleged “good” guys. 

Stone, however is full of contradictions, in that on the surface he is rule follower (“this coke should be admitted into evidence”) and an investigator (i.e. he notices when a low-level drug dealer suspiciously makes bail of $250K) but he quickly turns to plans that are more unethical and self-serving. He approaches Waters to help him investigate a hidden criminal vault he has discovered that he believes houses crime money and/or casino valuables. Located beneath a seemingly empty laundromat, Stone believes this vault is not on anyone’s radar except those who are “putting money into it but never taking any money out of it”. This vault becomes the target that Stone wishes to exploit, break into, and rob–with the help of a somewhat reluctant, but also bored Waters.  

As the heist planning unfolds, Stone and Waters move quickly from law-keepers to outlaws. Stone is the prime culprit and mastermind of this disintegration, while Waters acts as conscience and counter-balancing reason. Casing the joint; gathering blueprints, safe-cutting tools, weapons, masks, and a get-away van; Stone and Waters plan their overnight heist of the remote laundromat. Complicating matters is the one tenant of the building that must be dealt with in order for Stone and Waters to break into the vault. 

Much to the robbers dismay, the single tenant who greets them on heist night is actually a belligerent man and a strung-out (?) woman and in the melee of apprehending them both at gunpoint, Stone executes the man. Not wanting human casualties, Waters ties the girl up to save her from a similar fate (against Stone’s instinct and wishes). But things go from bad to worse as the two must overcome a slough of unforeseen challenges with the vault and ultimately its contents.

As the reality of the vault unfolds, Waters realizes that they are not robbing drug dealers or even a casino (most likely) as the vault is full of not just cash but diamonds as well. The man Stone killed in the apartment has stockpiled weapons and appears to be tied into a much larger and perhaps much more dangerous syndicate. Waters gets very nervous about the new information and wants to abandon the heist, but then he realizes that Stone has been aware of these realities for some time.

Thus the trust is broken between the two men and Waters becomes suspicious that Stone has planned this entire thing only to use him as a patsy. As the seed of doubt grows for Waters, he argues with Stone and the two nearly come to blows over whether or not they should proceed with their mission. Stone has purchased airline tickets out of the country without Waters’ knowledge, he argues that they should take the money, kill the girl, and flee together. Waters wants to put the money back where they found it, free the girl, and just walk away before things get much much worse for them. 

In the end, the two have a shootout in the apartment and Stone is shot and killed by Waters. Waters returns the jewelry haul to the vault, takes the girl to the van and offers to drop her off outside of town. But the girl (who made a phone call Waters sanctioned earlier in the film) has powerful friends who have tracked the two in van. Learning his “trust” mistake too late, Waters is shot by the girl’s faceless crew while he is driving the van on the highway. The film ends as the girl takes over the van and stops it before it gets plowed by a semi-truck. The bodies of the two policemen turned criminals are bagged and tagged, and their heist equipment is admitted into evidence as the credits roll. 

Stone and Waters

Nicolas Cage and Elijah Wood are a great actor pairing in this film. On the surface, Waters appears to be the one who is “losing his grip” on his life, but as we get to know Stone better and see him in action, it quickly becomes apparent that he’s the one who is “not quite right” and is the most suspicious character ethically (and behaviorally) of the two. Some examples:

• Stone invites Waters to a neon-themed night club and then persuades him to try eating a lemon with hot sauce on it. Waters thinks it’s very gross and can’t believe that Stone like eating it. Stone admits that he doesn’t. LOL.

• Stone lives with his father (played by a very old Jerry Louis) who doesn’t understand that his son is actually a policeman, or at least doesn’t see him as a “real investigator.”

• Stone mortgages his house to help pay for the expensive equipment needed to break into the vault. 
• A night before the heist, Stone pretends that he didn’t reserve the mini-van needed for their getaway and claims it was Waters responsibility. Waters freaks out only to be told by Stone that he was joking.
• Stone poses as a casino worker / server in order to get intel on the vault. He schmoozes with the other employees, does some crazy dance moves to entertain them, and keeps his tips in a white envelope (because as he tells Waters, it’s “more money than we make.”)
• Stone schedules a meet up to buy guns illegally from a guy named Bobo. He ends up shooting the man with his own gun. It’s very pre-meditated as he brought the bullets with him. (It’s at this point that the audience really starts to distrust the moral character and mental stability of Stone.)
• Stone hires a homeless man to take polaroids of the laundry mat where the vault is located to help with casing the heist. The man takes some poor quality photos and one of his penis which Stone leaves in the stack for a Waters as a “little surprise” for him to find.

Misfit Karma Martyr

As I’ve stated in previous posts, Nicolas Cage is best when he plays the Misfit Hero or Savior. In The Trust, we get a strange twist on this category. Instead of a hero or anti-hero or tragic figure, we get Cage as a self-involved misfit who is a martyr to his own greed and ambition. In some ways he is a cross between Barney Fife and Michael Scott.

On some level he means well, and I believe when it comes to Waters, he actually did see him as an equal and a partner, but his decision making and ethical compass is all out of wack. I mentioned earlier that he is a alternate-reality Big Daddy and I believe this holds true here where Stone has a code of conduct that he is following, but it is askew from most other people’s. In the same way that Big Daddy twisted morality to make an assassin / vigilante out of his own daughter, Stone bends the rules quite a bit to rob from the corrupt and give to the “slightly less” corrupt. It’s questionable and the fact that his risk tolerance is so high makes it even worse. In the end, the eroded trust between Stone and Waters ultimately leads to “karma police” arresting (and killing) poor Stone as he was shot through a wall of the arms-hoarder’s apartment by his own protege. It was tragic, but also deserved. Had Stone merely painted inside the lines a bit by not killing the tenant, by telling Waters more of his plan, by being frugal in how much he was willing to steal from such obviously dangerous men, everything may have worked out in the end.  But his greed and peculiarities caught up with him. Unfortunately, karma also caught up with Waters, in the end, too. 

First for Nicolas Cage as Stone

• In a movie with Frodo Baggins
• Eating lemon slices with hot sauce on it.
• Using mouth spray
• Taking on a side gig as a hotel pool boy and waiter (name tag: Scotty)
• Speaking bad German
• Mortgages house to invest in a heist
• Putting a ton of sunscreen on his nose
• Waiting for a gun dealer outside Bonanza Gift “World’s Largest Gift Shop”
• MacGyver’s an explosive charge

Recurrences

• Playing a cop (It Could Happen to You, World Trade Center, Wicker Man, The Frozen Ground) and a corrupt one (Bad Lieutenant: PoCNO) 
• In Las Vegas (Honeymoon in Vegas, Leaving Las Vegas, Con Air, Knowing)
• In a movie with a vault (Trespass) and breaking into a vault from an adjacent room (Stolen)
• Sporting a Magnum style mustache (Kick Ass)
• Puts on a disguise and takes on a completely different job (Valley Girl) to do intel (Face/Off, Kick Ass, Dying of the Light)
• Inappropriate manager vs. employee dynamic (Vampire’s Kiss)
• Involved in an arms deal that turned violent (Lord of War)

Quotables

“This is a very interesting ashtray.”

“RoB a dRuG DeAleR?”

“I think they’re checking us out…”

“You are a BAD ASS!” 

“Well you’re out there smoking that REEFER…”

“Stay positive, dude!” 

“You’re a positive thinker, and I respect you, and I FUCKING dig you.”

“Bobo’s interesting. Especially for someone who sells guns. It’s fun!”

“You haven’t had a lot of coffee today have you? JK.”

“I have an idea. It’s kind of WACKY.”  [Ends up making a little bomb to break through vault.]

“We’re in the heart of the American dream.”

Conclusion

One understated aspect of this film was its dark comedy. From the hours Waters spent taping out a “to scale” blueprint of the vault in an abandoned warehouse, to the criminals escaping a drug bust while the police were present in the first seen, to Stone using police surveillance video to identify a favorite sandwich shop, there were many funny moments and one-liners in the film that made it worthwhile. 

While the film may not have gotten the best reviews or have a high ranking on IMDB (5.5 out of 10), I was entertained throughout, most especially when the attempts to break into the vault met hiccup after hiccup, and had to be resolved through a variety of hair-brained improvisations. Stone is the type of role that Nicolas Cage thrives in: slightly off-key, pretty off-center, dangerously odd. You don’t know if the guy is going to sing you a serenade or put a bullet in your head. That’s Nicky for you; madcap unpredictable genius. I’d put my trust in him 73 times over. I have. And you should too.