Reindeer Games (* out of ****)
Starring Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron, Gary Sinise Directed By John Frankenheimer Warner Bros., Rated R, 2000 Running Time: 1 Hour 45 Minutes
By Sean Molloy
[LIGHT SPOILERS]
Your first clue that something isn't gonna be quite right with the movie you're about to see: It's heavily Christmas-themed and its release date is, oh, say, at the end of February.
Your second clue that something isn't gonna be quite right with the movie you're about to see: Charlize Theron, one of the movie's dubious stars, makes an appearance on The Daily Show in which, when asked if her new movie's any good, she replies with the equivalent of a verbal sigh... assuring us that, yeah, it sure is a movie, all right! And there's some scenes like those you'd expect to find in a movie, and there's some action... and there's other... stuff... too.
How to immediately grab my attention: Open your movie with five dead guys in Santa Claus suits. Then show a caption reading "Six days earlier..." Ya know, I was honestly interested to find out what killed all those poor Santas...
How to immediately lose my attention: Follow your opening scene with a terminally dull nice-guys-who-don't-deserve-to-be-in-prison scene. Write a line for the one of prisoners like "I just want to go home and eat Christmas dinner and watch some ball with my dad." Then, have Ben Affleck actually say that line, on film, and forget to leave it on the cutting room floor. For good measure, throw in a poorly motivated prison riot and have Affleck's best buddy stabbed... aw... and just two days before his release, too. Already the cliches are piled on thick, and when it rains, it pours.
How to take my attention, dash it violently against the rocks, and make it so that I'm contemplating my strategy for calling "shotgun" about an hour before I know the credits will roll: Deny your characters the ability to think. Have Ben Affleck, for some reason I'll never understand, pretend he's his dead prison buddy so that he can get his girlfriend, played by Charlize Theron. Have Gary Sinise show up and force the two of them to participate in a poorly planned casino heist. The villains' big idea? Kidnap Affleck because he used to be a security guard at the casino, force him to tell you where all the doors in the place are, then dress up in Santa suits, create some "diversions" and rob the place. On paper, it seems like the stuff of a potential caper comedy, but veteran director John Frankenheimer wrongly picks up that piece of paper and thinks he's looking at the makings for some sort of clever action-crime thriller. It's not like the man isn't capable... far from it. He's the man responsible for classic political thrillers like The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May. He wowed me with some the most memorable car chases I've ever seen in last year's Ronin. But he's certainly guilty of churning out some certifiable losers... put Reindeer Games on the shelf of shame with his 1996 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau.
Step one in making your movie as easily forgotten as possible: Cast Ben Affleck in the role of the world's most generic hero. He gets no good one-liners, he doesn't get to shoot or implode anything in new and interesting ways, and all we know about him is that he regrets his past as a car thief and wants a cup of hot chocolate and piece of pecan pie. His name is Rudy (short for Rudolph, in all likelihood. See, it's called Reindeer Games. Get it? Get it? Shut up.) In the past, Affleck has been at his best as a supporting actor, and Reindeer Games does nothing to further his viability as a leading man.
Step two in making your movie as easily forgotten as possible: Gary Sinise's villain dresses and looks like the most standard movie crook a filmmaker could have some up with. He's dirty and potty-mouthed, he's got long, scruffy hair and a goatee, and I fully expected him to walk out of the casino carrying sacks with giant dollar signs on them. He's also extremely inept at what he does. He thinks garish cowboy costumes and Santa suits make acceptable disguises, and he trusts Affleck's character to pull through even after, time and time and time again, he tricks him and lies to him and nearly kills him. But instead of tapping into the comic possibilities of this role, Sinise seems to think he's playing some sort of tough, smart, and smooth criminal mastermind, rather than the complete moron that was obviously written into the script. [On a side note, Gary Sinise wins this week's "Title!" award, as he's the one who gets to awkwardly cram the name of the movie into one of his lines early in the proceedings. Last week's winner was Natasha Henstridge for The Whole Nine Yards.]
How to take your bad idea and make things worse: Include two or three plot twists that, instead of making the apparently stupidity of the plan seem suddenly intelligent, make the plan seem even more ridiculous and unlikely. This is a bad movie. And what's worse is that, except for a few moments near the not-so-stunning conclusion as the preposterous is replaced by the ludicrously preposterous, Reindeer Games never really gives us the satisfaction of being laughably bad. If they'd done that much, at least I would have been entertained.
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