REINDEER GAMES (director: John Frankenheimer; screenwriter: Ehren Kruger; cinematographer: Alan Caso; editors:Tony Gibbs/Michael Kahn; cast: Ben Affleck (Rudy), Gary Sinise (Gabriel), Clarence Williams III (Merlin), Charlize Theron (Ashley), James Frain (Nick), Dennis Farina (Jack Bangs), Isaac Hayes (Zook), Donal Logue (Pug), Danny Trejo (Jumpy), 2000)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
How the mighty have fallen! John Frankenheimer was once recognized as a quality filmmaker capable of making great paranoid thrillers (The Manchurian Candidate), who has slipped off the precipice of reliability and is now reduced to making this nonsensical, exploitive actioner, that has a bleak metallic snowy look to it. It is made as if to bypass movie houses and go straight to video rentals. It is made from a mindless script. No director, cinematographer, or actor could have made this into a credible film (Well! replacing Affleck as the lead couldn't have hurt in immediately improving it. He didn't fit the part, looking collegian and clueless throughout the entire film).
The film's only purpose seems to be to come up with as many ludicrous plot twists as possible and see if any one in the audience can guess how it will work itself out. The violence is gratuitous and in the last 20 minutes or so, the story proves itself to be an insulting one. The characters became gradually less and less human as the twists kept piling up. The shame of this film, is that it was oddly enough entertaining for long stretches, as it seemed to pass for being a diverting actioner, until it reached the point of no return in tolerability.
Reindeer Games is shot in British Colombia but set in Michigan; the movie is from an original story written by Ehren Kruger (Arlington Road/Scream 3), about an ex-con being forced into participating in a casino robbery and having a love affair turn very ugly.
Rudy (Ben Affleck) and Nick (James Frain) are prison cellmates, both getting out in a couple of days. Rudy was in five years for auto theft and Nick three years for manslaughter; he killed someone trying to defend his girlfriend from being attacked. Nick developed a pen pal relationship with a girl named Ashley (Theron), who will meet him outside the prison when he gets out. Nick's cell is filled with photos of his glamorous pen pal and he has talked with Rudy about her for some time now, even sharing with him the intimate letters she wrote.
A prison fracas develops and a prisoner shanks Nick to death, as Nick comes to the rescue of Rudy. When Rudy gets out, he sees Ashley waiting by the prison gates and sees for himself that she is the fine looking babe he saw photos of, so he decides to tell her that he's Nick. To say that this film had holes in the script and that everything about the story could be challenged, goes without saying. Just to show what I mean, Rudy would have to wonder or at least have some suspicion why Ashley did not receive by now a photo of Nick and did not visit him in prison. But things only get more contrived the further along the story moves, so better to forget all the contrivances to the story and try to enjoy the film as is, and take this B- film for what it is.
After the couple returns to the motel they rented for another round of lovemaking, Rudy discovers how dangerous a mistake he made when Ashley's sinister brother Gabriel (Sinise) and three other armed thugs of his gunrunning gang show up and beat him for violating his sister. They were led to believe by Ashley that Rudy used to work in an Indian casino in rural Michigan--you see, they think Rudy is Nick. Gabriel forces Rudy to tell him about the casino's security setup, but Rudy, now, says he isn't Nick, but he then says he is Nick after the gang threatens to kill him for not being Nick. Gabriel has a confused look at all this indecision, and keeps deciding whether to kill him or not. This little ploy will go on for the remainder of the film, as Rudy is sometimes Nick and sometimes he's just plain Rudy. Though, by being Nick, which is the name he will use for most of the film, he at least gets to remain alive.
If you think you have seen the main twists, let me warn you, that's just the beginning of all the surprises. The more of them there are, the less sense the film seems to make. John Frankenheimer moves the action along at breakneck speed but the more the characters try explaining the ever-changing situations, the more ridiculous the explanations become.
The casino robbery on Christmas Eve starts the lowlights of the film, as the gang, along with Rudy, are disguised as five Santas, and they will fill the Michigan snow with enough blood to satisfy a blood bank for years. Then the film tries to pull a complete 360 degree reversal and end on a note of Christmas cheer, since I think this is supposed to be some kind of Christmas story. What disturbed me more than anything else about the film, which includes its senseless violence and its need for an obligatory nude shot of Theron, was the audacity to try and clean up the mess it made, by relating the film's finale to the holiday spirit of giving. It seems to want to spread its desperate gloom over everything it can touch. The thing this film mostly gave me, was a sense of astonishment that Frankenheimer, who could still in flashes shoot a scene that is mesmerizing (the one on the cracked ice with Affleck jumping into the chilly water to save Theron) and then follow it up with one that is so dopey (machine-gunning warfare in a casino that looks like a supermarket), that you wonder what happened to the director in a career that spanned 44- years. What compelled him to make such a dumb film as this one!
REVIEWED ON 3/14/2000 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews