Roy (Nicolas Cage) is a con man with an issue. He is an obsessive compulsive (among other things). He has to open and close doors three times (each – although there are a few times that he forgets, which indicates that perhaps it’s all in his head).

Luckily, he has a caring partner in Frank (Sam Rockwell), who helps him remember to take his medicine when he needs to do so, and manages to set up plenty of short cons, where Roy can just walk in and help clean up the mess so that they can rake in some easy, if small, money. Frank just wants to get Roy to make a big hit.

One day when Roy knocks his medicine down the sink, Frank sets up a meeting with a new doctor, because it seems that the one who was providing the (illegal) prescription can’t be reached all of a sudden. That doctor helps by reluctantly giving Roy a new medicine, but at least the new medicine seems to do the job. In order to give him the medicine, however, the new doctor makes Roy sit down for a session, and during that interview, it comes out that Roy wonders what happened to the child that he thinks he may have had from a former lover.

By the next week’s meeting with the doctor, Roy is so convinced that he needs to find out, he has the doctor agree to call his ex to find out what happened, and sure enough, it seems that there was a child – a girl – and while the girl wants to meet her father, Roy’s ex doesn’t want anything to do with him.

The middle part of the movie gets weighed down a bit while Roy tries to be a dad, but there are some funny moments as he tries to do the right thing and fails miserably, and then as he teaches his daughter how to run a con, but since he wants to be responsible, he makes her give the money back to the mark. In the end, since he wants to be set up for the future, he agrees with Frank that they need to run a long con for a big score, which suits Frank just fine, so they set up a big target and get ready for a big payday.

Naturally, it doesn’t work out just like you’d expect, but the twist probably isn’t exactly what you would see coming either. The ending is worth the wait if you can make it that far, it just takes a little while to get there.

In fact, the ending is probably one of the better ones I’ve seen, right up there with The Usual Suspects as far as complexity of how things come together to make things work. If the rest of the story didn’t bog down quite so much in the middle it would have been a lot better. Nonetheless, it’s still quite good.

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, violence, some sexual content and language.

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Actor: Adam Clark, Actor: Alison Lohman, Actor: Andi Sherrill, Actor: Beth Grant, Actor: Bill Saito, Actor: Bruce Altman, Actor: Bruce McGill, Actor: Daniel Villarreal, Actor: Dennis Anderson, Actor: Fran Kranz, Actor: Giannina Facio, Actor: Jenny O'Hara, Actor: Jerry Hauck, Actor: Jim Zulevic, Actor: Kate Steele, Actor: Kim Cassidy, Actor: Larry Vigus, Actor: Lynn Ann Leveridge, Actor: Marco Assante, Actor: Marco Kyris, Actor: Melora Walters, Actor: Michael Clossin, Actor: Monnae Michaell, Actor: Nicolas Cage, Actor: Nigel Gibbs, Actor: Paul Hubbard, Actor: Ramsey Malouky, Actor: Sam Rockwell, Actor: Sheila Kelley, Actor: Sonya Eddy, Actor: Steve Eastin, Actor: Stoney Westmoreland, Actor: Tim Kelleher, Actor: Tim Maculan, Director: Ridley Scott, Rated: PG-13, Year: 2003