February 15, 2012 
Trespass – Starring Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman and Ben Mendelsohn. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Rated MA. By Hilary Simmons.
The path of true love is pitted with potholes, especially if you’re a character in a movie. This is particularly true if you happen to be Nicole Kidman or Nicolas Cage, who are thrown together in a super awkward coupling in Joel Schumacher’s home-invasion thriller, Trespass. Kidman and Cage play Sarah and Kyle Miller, an uptight couple who live in a fancy house on the water and sigh ruefully over their sulky teenage daughter. Oh, and Kyle is a high-end diamond dealer who can’t read without his oversized glasses. Got that?
We are led to believe that if the pristine walls could speak, they would whisper in shocked undertones of secret trysts and teenage smoking. All is not what it seems at the Miller house; you could cut the tension with an ornamental cheese knife. When Avery, the aforementioned sullen daughter, announces that she wants to go to a party instead of eating dinner, Sarah and Kyle exchange pained parental looks and pop-psychology platitudes. Meanwhile, Avery flees the architect-designed coop undetected. Sarah and Kyle are about to exhale their way into meaningful conversation when the intercom crackles, and, in an astoundingly senseless but plot-appreciable decision, Kyle buzzes the two men professing to be policemen inside without so much as seeing their faces.
Of course, they are not really policemen. They are masked thugs brandishing guns who want money, crack, and maybe some antipsychotic medication. Kyle bravely (or perhaps blindly – they take his glasses) refuses to give them the combination to the wall safe and a shouty battle of wills begins as flashbacks reveal that Sarah may have boned the youngest break-in artist.
So where does the true love come in? When Kyle bawls at Sarah, “It’s your filthy lust that invited them in”? Maybe not. No, this movie measures true love by whether Sarah and Kyle will sacrifice their lives for each other or to protect their daughter (who sneaks back in after a lousy party). This adds a new dimension to the hostage-terror formula. What’s good about Trespass? Ben Mendelsohn as the lead thug. But he can’t fill all the potholes himself.
1/5
Trespass arrives on DVD and Blu-ray in Australia on February 16, 2012.
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What were Nicole Kidaman and Ben Mendholsen thinking when they accepted the script for this shocking film? I can go as far as understanding Kidman accepting the part with her string of unsuccessful movies of late, but I’d expected better from Mendolsen. My belief in him accepting this part is his reattempt to break into Hollywood.
Yes but does Cage have at least one scene where he goes nuts? Isn’t this now obligatory in every movie? PS tx for the review – Trespass sounds awful. Will avoid.
Not one but 2 Oscar winners in this pile of crap. Boy they must be desperate for the money. Mind you neither of them could ever be mistaken for actors anyway.
‘shouty battle of wills’ hehe