The film was released and produced by Paramount Pictures in North America and Buena Vista International (through Touchstone Pictures) internationally on August 7, 1998. The film garnered mixed reviews from critics, criticizing the film's story, writing and pacing while praising its style and the performances. It grossed $104 million worldwide against a $73 million budget.
Plot
During a tropical storm, corrupt Atlantic City police detective Rick Santoro attends a boxing match at the soon-to-close local arena between heavyweight champion Lincoln Tyler and challenger Jose Pacifico Ruiz. He meets up with his best friend since childhood, U.S. NavyCommander Kevin Dunne, who is escorting Defense Secretary Charles Kirkland and Arena director Gilbert Powell at the fight after a trip to Norfolk, Virginia.
As the first round begins, Kevin notices redhead Serena who wears a ruby ring; he leaves his seat which is then taken by Julia Costello, a platinum blonde in a white satin suit. When Ruiz unexpectedly knocks out Tyler, gunshots ring out, mortally wounding Kirkland and grazing Julia, who loses her blonde wig, revealing her naturally dark hair. Kevin kills the sniper and orders the arena be locked down. Julia escapes into the casino.
Rick notices the supposedly knocked-out Tyler awoke at the sound of shots, and studies the fight tape which reveals the knockout punch didn't connect. Tyler confesses he threw the fight to pay gambling debts. Serena paid him to take a dive. Suspecting a conspiracy, Rick reveals everything he has learned to Kevin, who says the Norfolk trip was to test the AirGuard missile defense system, which Powell's company is backing. He deduces that the sniper, Palestinian terrorist Tarik Ben Rabat, assassinated Kirkland over the Pentagon's defense cooperation with Israel.
Rick studies surveillance footage to find Serena and Zeitz while Kevin searches for Julia, aided by Powell's security guards. Kevin is actually the conspiracy mastermind. He kills Serena and Zeitz and enlists Tyler.
Julia seduces a hotel guest so she can hide in his room. Rick finds her and takes her into protective custody. Julia confesses she is an analyst and had discovered the AirGuard test results were faked. She had tipped off Kirkland, but Kevin discovered her actions and arranged the conspiracy to kill her and Kirkland. After hiding Julia in a warehouse, Rick finds footage proving Kevin's guilt.
Kevin confesses to Rick, saying his motive was to prevent further attacks on U.S. ships, like one in which Kevin had had to leave 28 men to drown. He offers Rick one million dollars for Julia's location. When Rick refuses Kevin has Tyler beat him up, then plants a tracker on Rick and follows him to the warehouse just as Hurricane Jezebel hits. Rick uses a large wave as cover to rush Julia outside, where the police witness Kevin opening fire. Despite his protests that Julia is a suspect, Kevin commits suicide on live news.
Rick is hailed as a hero, but the press uncover his corruption and he loses his job, mistress, and family. Before reporting for his prison term, Rick meets Julia. She thanks him, as Powell is scrapping AirGuard. Rick promises to call her when he gets out in twelve to eighteen months. Serena's ruby ring is seen embedded in a concrete pillar of the new Powell Millennium Arena.
De Palma offered the role of Commander Kevin Dunne to Al Pacino but he turned it down.[4]Will Smith was then cast as Commander Kevin Dunne,[5] but Smith later dropped out of the role as he wasn't offered enough money.[6]
Snake Eyes' original ending involved a huge tidal wave going through the casino.[7] This visual effects-heavy ending was cut and replaced with a reshot sequence in post-production, but numerous references to it still remain in the final film. A shot near the end of the film shows an ambulance driving down an oceanside road with a wave about to crash into it before the film cuts to another shot, Rick Santoro talks about almost drowning at the very end of the film, and references to a storm are made throughout the entire film, which were all meant to build up to the cut climax.[7]
Reception
Released on August 7, 1998, Snake Eyes debuted at No. 2 on its opening weekend (behind Saving Private Ryan), with $16.31 million, beating out the weekend's other wide release Halloween H20: 20 Years Later at $16.19 million.[8][9] It grossed $55.6 million in North America, and $103.9 million worldwide.[3]
Critical response
The film received a 42% "rotten" score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 71 reviews with the critics' consensus: "Snake Eyes has a number of ingredients that promise a trashy fun time; unfortunately, they're lost in an energetic and stylish thriller with a frustratingly hollow core."[10][11][12][13][14] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 52 out of 100 based on reviews from 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[15] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "C+" on scale of A+ to F.[16] De Palma himself responded to the criticisms in an interview with Mark Cousins, "There's a lot of discussion in Snake Eyes about why do we reveal who did it so soon. Well, the problem is that it isn't about who did it. It's a mystery about a relationship, two people, and how finding that out affects their relationship ... those kinds of procedural movies are extremely boring..."[17]
Resemblance to Charlie Kirk assassination
Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk in 2025, social media users perceived parallels between the real-life assassination of Kirk and that of the fictional Charles Kirkland.[18] Besides the very similar names of both Charleses (with the film’s incident occurring during a boxing match and Kirk’s at a political rally), online discussions highlighted additional coincidences, such as the name of the alleged shooter (Tyler Robinson) resembling the film’s boxer Lincoln Tyler [19] and a hurricane named Jezebel, the same name a site has that paid for witches on Etsy to supposedly curse Charlie (albeit weeks before his death).
The comparisons went viral on social media, with some users alleging "predictive programming", though fact-checkers attributed the similarities to coincidence, confirmation bias, poor estimations of likelihoods by chance (see the Improbability Principle by David J. Hand), and false positives (e.g. the movie's fictional assassination took place on Sept. 19, not Sept. 10, as some claimed).[20]
Military Accuracy
The film makes reference to many secret military technologies that existed in 1998 but were not known to the public and would have been seen as fiction, such as the accuracy of Global Positioning System tracking, which was not opened to the public until 2000. Also featured is a reference to the suspected accuracy of the Keyhole spy satellite program, where a symbolic representation of a spy satellite is used to solve the crime.
The film may also reference real life allegations of defense contractor fraud which were not publicly disclosed until after the film's release. In 1996, Dr. Nira Schwartz of contractor TRW informed a top Navy[21] science advisor, Dr. Theodore Postol of a critical flaw in an interceptor missile program. Dr. Schwartz claimed TRW faked test results of Ballistic Missile Defense systems intended to protect America from rogue nuclear attack and that TRW had fired her for making the allegations. Postol worked for MIT's Lincoln Labs which was tasked with investigating Dr. Schwartz's allegations and stated they were unfounded, but a subsequent 2004 Congressional investigation noted political pressure to cover them up. The allegations were only made public in 2000 in a lawsuit.[22] At the time, antiballistic missile development by politically-connected contractors was being considered in lieu of the 1972 ABM Treaty favored by some politicians and intelligence analysts. The World Policy Institute calculated that during the 1997-1998 election cycle four missile defense contractors including TRW spent $34 million in lobbying for the program, including the sponsorship of sporting events. The program was also supported by Israel in light of the failure[23] of the Patriot missile systems to intercept Scud missiles in the 1991 Gulf war, and American-developed technology would later be integrated as part of the development of the Iron Dome Israeli defense system.[24]
Postol wrote to White House chief of staff John Podesta in 2000: "In truth the procedures followed by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization were like rolling a pair of dice and throwing away all the outcomes that did not give snake eyes, and then fraudulantly making a claim they have scientific evidence to show that they could reliably predict when a roll of the dice will be a snake eyes."[25][26] In 1999, Postol also contributed to a book titled, "The Nuclear Turning Point" arguing for an arms control defense posture.[27]
The film obliquely references the 1996 alleged suicide of Naval Director of Operations Admiral Michael Boorda. This was widely suspected to have involved foul play because Boorda was shot through the chest, which is rare for suicides. The fictional commander Dunne who arranged the inside job assassination involving a fake suicide note also shoots himself through the chest, and shortly before his suicide the filmmaker delivers a close-up of Dunne's "V" insignia, which was the alleged motive of Boorda's suicide.
The character of Charles Kirkwood in the film resembles Donald Rumsfeld. In 1995, as amendments to the 1972 ABM treaty were being considered, the Central Intelligence Agency estimate on ballistic missiles concluded U.S. was safe from missile attacks from "rogue states." Congressional lawmakers were furious and in 2001 assembled a commission to challenge the CIA briefing, appointing newly appointed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld chair. In the 1990's, Rumsfeld had argued on behalf of a number of think tanks in favor of missile development. The subsequent "Rumsfeld Report" was used to protect the administration from critics of the antiballistic missile program, even though he would have had access to allegations of fraud by contractors.
↑Fieveson, Harold (June 1, 1999). The Nuclear Turning Point: A Blueprint for Deep Cuts and De-Alerting of Nuclear Weapons. Brookings Institution Press. ISBN0815709544.
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