In the 2000s, Ridley Scott went smaller with Matchstick Men and A Good Year – a pair of oddball entries into his filmography.
No matter how much someone might try, it is difficult to equate Ridley Scott with comedy, though he would now and then try to display a lighter side to his directorial touch.
In the 2000s, he attempts this with two pictures that lean into playfulness and, to an extent, many of the themes Scott enjoys across his movies around his masculine protagonists: dysfunctional men connecting with family and their roots and becoming more rounded, mature men in the process, albeit with both Matchstick Men in 2003 and A Good Year in 2006 tackling such ideas in significantly varying ways.
Matchstick Men adapts the 2002 novel of the same name by Eric Garcia, with Ted and Nicholas Griffin on screenwriting duties. It sees Scott cast the ever eccentric Nicolas Cage for the first (and as of writing sadly last) time as Roy Walker, a Los Angeles con artist. Walker suffers from Tourette’s and OCD, running scams with his partner Frank (Sam Rockwell) before a lapse in medication sends him spiralling into a panic attack, later therapy and a striking revelation: he has a daughter he didn’t know about.
Spoiler to come (so skip this paragraph if you don’t want it), but it feels worth discussing the film in the context of the rather effective twist in the final act that throws the context for the picture into an entirely different realm, one that as a viewer I found, to be honest, a touch jarring. I felt conned myself, which is perhaps the point. Angela, Roy’s daughter – played by Alison Colman, in her 20s and acting 14, which very much shows – turns out to be nothing of the sort and rather Frank’s accomplice in a long con against Roy himself.
To Scott’s credit, he knew of the strange age disparity between Colman and her character, working it into his process initially:
When I met with Alison, that was the only time in my life I’ve ever been conned, because she walked in and I just bought the fact that she was 14. I didn’t discover she was actually 22 until rehearsals. But I didn’t need to know. It wouldn’t have made any difference, and actually it worked out really well; she’s got the wisdom of someone who’s 22, whilst being able to play a 14-year-old. You know, there’s wisdom in certain children sometimes – you can feel you’re in the presence of a little old soul.
This works to an extent and doesn’t in a film that relies on you buying into the relationship between Roy and Angela, as he teaches her the tricks of his trade and she helps him with recovery while coping with his additional needs, before the rug is pulled. You know instinctively that Colman is an adult playing a child, both on screen ultimately and off, but equally that adds a slightly uncanny sensibility to their dynamic and the black comedy that ensues from it.
Ultimately, Scott doesn’t feel quite as at home with this lower scale, grounded kind of storytelling than he does with epic canvases. He talks about Cage’s awareness of Tati in his performance or the willingness to let his actors improvise (which he doesn’t seem to prefer, liking the script he had), but you feel despite Matchstick Men having visual touches and artistic approaches that belie the low-fi nature of the story, that Scott isn’t always playing to his natural strengths.
He discussed how making a film with such a low budget as this works to his process:
I always work like lightning. I’m two-take Charlie – but that only comes with experience. In the last ten years, I’ve been getting faster and faster. I find it’s better because actors, for the most part, like to feel like they’re really moving forward. But even if I think I have the scene as I want it, I always ask the actors if they’re happy before moving on. The actors’ call is very important as well. If an actor wants another take, you just give it up, and do another one. It’s faster to just do it, than talk about it. Producers particularly can drive you crazy with a whole dissertation about a scene and I’m like, “Shut up! Let’s just do it!”
Oddly enough, I feel this works better for Scott on bigger productions, where he prevents becoming bogged down in endless reshoots and is able to bring home a large scale production in a relatively short space of time. On Matchstick Men, sometimes gets lost for me. It feels a touch half-baked, unable to truly engage mirth or explore the core ideas rooted into Roy’s persona.
Most critics responded well but audiences didn’t flock to this one, the film only just making back its budget. Scott moved on to Kingdom Of Heaven in 2005, much more his forte, and in terms of his oeuvre, Matchstick Man became a touch forgotten. As did the next film after Kingdom of Heaven, as Scott decided on another run at the breezy character drama/comedy with perhaps an even less successful picture – A Good Year in 2006.
Re-teaming with Russell Crowe after the iconic success of Gladiator at the start of the decade, Scott adapts Peter Mayle’s 2004 novel of the same name, written by Marc Klein, which tells the story of Max Skinner, an arrogant London stockbroker who learns his beloved uncle Henry (Albert Finney, seen in bucolic flashbacks throughout) has passed away and left him his beautiful Provence vineyard and estate.
You can probably guess the rest. Max begins as a cheeky chappie we’re meant to love, despite being an avatar of ruthless capitalism in the cold heart of London money, who comes to see in the simple charm of French country life a different, calmer way of life, connecting to Henry’s past and the surprise daughter (once again) Henry never knew about (played by Abbie Cornish). Oh and he finds love with Fanny (yes, Fanny), an acerbic local waitress (played by a game Marion Cotillard, who also looks stunning throughout), who initially hates him.
To say A Good Year is twee and mawkish in the extreme is to do both of those terms a disservice. At less than two decades old, it feels already profoundly outdated, trading on hoary old character tropes and poorly staged farce. Crowe is many things but a comic actor he is not. Scott, moreover, does not come naturally to this kind of material, despite being drawn to Provence as he owned a house there and wanted to film in the area, and being long time friends with Mayle who wrote the initial book. A book that came about after they discussed the prospect of a film.
Scott claimed that he wanted, at this stage of his career, to become known for more than action pictures or brawny theatrics:
As I go on, I’m very attracted to comedy. At the end of the day, because you’ve been having a good old laugh, you go home laughing—as opposed to dealing with blood all day and you go home and want to cut your wrists.
I mean, Scott certainly is one for binaries there. A Good Year seems like a striking reaction to a desire for more lightness in his life, weighed down perhaps by the heaviness of historical epics and tales about cannibal serial killers or tragic heroes in dark, brutal eras. Is it a mid-life crisis on screen? It feels like it at points. Thank heavens they didn’t run with the initial idea of Finney’s Henry being a ghost, returning to talk with Crowe’s Max, as they we would have entered wacky territory and the film not just jumping but scaling the shark.
Seeking an opportunity to work with Finney again, after he appeared in Scott’s very first film The Duellists, Scott brought together new and familiar actors for an experience one senses they all had far more fun making than audiences would have watching – despite a fine cast of British supporting players such as Kenneth Cranham, Tom Hollander or Rafe Spall in tow. A Good Year was roundly slated by critics and, as with Matchstick Men, audiences stayed away, the film making a significant loss for the studio.
Scott subsequently gave up the goose on lightweight fare and returned, full bore, into filmmaking with scale, scope and grandeur. This was perhaps for the best. Though experimentation is always valuable for any filmmaker, Scott’s limitations extend to the breezy. He makes cinema with style and heft, riven with bigger conceptual ideas.
We would see that in Scott’s next film, where he moves closer to a key 1970s contemporary, boldly proving he could do with the crime epic what he had shown he could do with the historical.
You can find A J. on social media, including links to his Patreon and books, via Linktr.ee here.
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