'The Trust' Trailer: Nicolas Cage And Elijah Wood Do The "Incompetent Criminals" Thing

The film festival circuit is littered with the corpses of "bumbling idiots try to be criminals" movies that never managed to go anywhere. It's one of the default subgenres for filmmakers working on a modest scale – you don't need too much money or a particularly large scope to tell the story of idiot criminals.

Fortunately, The Trust, which is set to screen at this year's SXSW, looks like it could be one of the good ones and the presence of Elijah Wood and Nicolas Cage in the lead roles certainly helps. It's one of those duos that actually makes a lot of sense, as the boyish innocence of Wood looks like it'll play quite well when placed alongside a particularly unhinged Cage. If nothing else, this new trailer hints at a movie that will soon provide the world with an abundance of new Cage GIFs.

The set-up here is familiar, even if the details have been swapped. Cage and Wood play two low-level cops who uncover a mysterious safe during the course of a criminal investigation. And since these two are under-appreciated and seemingly not very bright, they decide to break into the safe and take whatever is inside for themselves. Naturally, things do not go according to plan and the slightly goofy comedy of the trailer's first half gives way to some far more intense moments.

And it looks pretty good! The trailer itself isn't especially well cut, but the actual content and performances and story beats looks promising enough.

The Trust also stars Jerry Lewis, which makes me cross my fingers and hope for a scene where he and Cage get into an altercation and can duel one another with insane facial expressions. Surely directors Alex Brewer and Benjamin Brewer (who have spent most of their careers so far making music videos) wouldn't cast those two in the same movie and then deny us that much.

Here is the official synopsis for the film:

A dramatic comedy about Waters and Stone, two nobody police officers who work in the evidence room of the Las Vegas Police Department. When Stone discovers an unusually high bail receipt in connection to a drug bust, the two friends set in motion a plan to find the source of the money.

The Trust is set to premiere at this year's SXSW Film Festival being arriving on DirecTV on April 14, 2016. It will open in theaters an arrive on other VOD options on May 13, 2016.