'MATCHSTICK' BURNS BRIGHTLY BUT ONLY FOR SHORT WHILE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

DIRECTOR Ridley Scott controls his flamboyant visual tendencies and sometimes even controls star Nicolas Cage's excessive twitching in the eccentric sting drama ``Matchstick Men.'' Mildly admirable as all that is - and Cage even registers a compelling performance despite the indulgence that goes with it - the contrived yet rather predictable story line they're working here defeats the effort.

Based on a book by Eric Garcia, who's also written a series of novels about a dinosaur private eye (yes, you read that right), it must be noted that the ``Matchstick'' script credited to Nicholas and Ted Griffin is much better than, well, anything about a large lizard who solves crimes would conceivably be. There is psychological depth aplenty, and the film's central relationship is at least as important as its scam mechanics.

Again, praiseworthy factors. But when you don't buy the overall premise - or some particulars regarding said behavioral niceties - it makes a lot of serious work seem wasted.

Although Scott's cool, Kennedy-era look and soundtrack choices and the star's usual full commitment to his role keep making us want to cut the piece slack, there's trouble from the get-go accepting that Cage's Roy Waller - an agoraphobic neat freak who has to count three times before opening doors and gets seizures when exposed to sunlight - is also a top L.A. con artist. Working with another, more traditionally oily grifter named Frank (``Confessions of a Dangerous Mind's'' Sam Rockwell, good but getting typecast), Roy impersonates feds, wheedles account numbers out of marks, stuff like that.

How can a guy who blinks and hyperventilates at the slightest provocation pull off an illegal business that is accurately referred to as the confidence game? Well, with the help of pharmaceuticals, this film would have you believe. But when a series of events forces him to find a new Dr. Feelgood, he actually ends up meeting Angela (Alison Lohman, as fine as she was in last year's ``White Oleander''), the teenage daughter he never knew he had.

Much of the movie's middle section is devoted to Angela teaching Roy how to be human and him teaching her, after her natural talent for it emerges, the art of the scam. As extreme as the characters' situation may be, Cage and Lohman bring a wonderfully high degree of behavioral verity to their scenes together (when he's not having conniptions, anyway). But then the big score sets to looming ever larger, and we're all expected to be as surprised as the patsy by its outcome.

Primarily a visualist - his last three hits were ``Gladiator,'' ``Hannibal'' and ``Black Hawk Down'' - Scott can occasionally tell a character-based story well (check ``Thelma & Louise''). But it has to have a great script, and ``Matchstick Men's'' has too many incompatible ideas to be that. It does know some of the pleasures tough-to-swallow capers can give, though; and as mentioned, it tries to offer us a lot more than that in order to get us to let down our guard.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

MATCHSTICK MEN - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: violence, language, drug use, nudity, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Alison Lohman, Sam Rockwell, Bruce McGill, Bruce Altman.

Director: Ridley Scott.

Running time: 1 hr. 58 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Con thriller with neurotic tics and estranged parent-child bonding theme is cleverly contrived, but has too much going on for any of it to stick persuasively.