REINDEER GAMES (2000)
Grade: D-
Director: John Frankenheimer
Screenplay: Ehren Kruger
Starring: Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron, Gary Sinise, James Frain, Donal Logue, Clarence Williams, Dennis Farina, Danny Trejo
REINDEER GAMES is easily the worst of the three recent films penned by Ehren Kruger (SCREAM 3 and ARLINGTON RD are the others, each derivative in their own special way). The guy can't seem to write believable dialogue (Sample from REINDEER GAMES: "Rule #1: Never put a car thief behind the wheel"), create multi-faceted characters, or even engineer coherent plots but he sure knows how to pile on numerous nonsensical twists and turns (no matter if each one deems the actual story increasingly unlikely). His screenplay for REINDEER GAMES turns the tables on the audience so many times that watching the film becomes something of a punishment with no reward anywhere in sight. I can just envision Kruger laughing behind his keyboard, "Oh you thought my movie was gonna go here, f*ck you jack ass, take that twist, decipher this mother f*cker!" It's almost as if the writer were angry at us for shelling out money to see his stupid movie. And why the hell would anyone want to invest time in a movie when the screenwriter keeps changing his own rules for no reason other than to congratulate himself on how damn clever he is? Auteur theory be damned; it's Kruger's "style", not the director's that winds up on screen. Kruger has obviously never paid much mind to the old chestnut "sometimes less is more". And his numerous twists can't even claim to be originals; ARLINGTON RD's ending is a direct steal from the much better Alan J. Pakula thriller THE PARALLAX VIEW, and in REINDEER GAMES we get this ol' gem; Character incriminates themself by saying something they shouldn't know (pronouns used to protect the gender of the "character"...grammar be damned). "How did you know that?" the stunned protagonist asks, suddenly realizing that the character was in on the whole thing all along. . .
Since twist endings are currently so in vogue, and seeing as how Kruger's screenplays usually come equipped with about three twists per ending, I guess it's no wonder why he works so frequently. He's quickly becoming MIRAMAX's Mickey Mouse; the company has already signed him to work on several of their upcoming projects. This is appropriate considering that MIRAMAX (which used to place their label on some of the most artistically daring films) has quickly become a grindhouse for coddling foreign imports (LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL) and Freddie Prinze Jr. vehicles. Their company's current logo could be "We ride the trends".
REINDEER GAMES stars Ben Affleck as Rudy, a supposedly hardened criminal spending his days and nights behind bars with fantasies of pecan pies dancing atop his head. Although Affleck is given some barbed wire tattoos to insinuate bad assness, he plays the role like Steve Guttenberg preciously mugging through a POLICE ACADEMY flick. Affleck is such a puppy dog that it's impossible to believe he could survive in a harsh prison environment without becoming nearly everyone's bitch.
The role itself is so badly written (the character only grows balls when the plot calls for it), the twists so outrageous, and the directing so self consciously gritty that this is about as close to self parody as I can recall a recent "serious" movie getting. It may have been wiser had the film makers simply went all the way in that direction, casting Jerry Seinfeld as the hardened criminal and Howard Stern as the sniveling bad guy (who's played here by Gary Sinise in yet another over the top villain performance)
James Frain is Nick, Rudy's cellmate, a manslaughterer who's found a pen pal in the gorgeous Ashley Mason (Charlize Theron). Ashley is a prison groupie who sends Nick many cheesecake photos of her though she's never seen one picture of him. Which works out fine since the character is killed in a near-riot, and Rudy (who was to be paroled on the same day as Nick) takes his place, which leads to a sudden and very frenzied sex scene between Ashley and Rudy (so frenzied it kinda looks like rape) and a surprise visit from Ashley's brother, Gabriel (Gary Sinise), who waltzes into their shabby hotel room flanked by his thuggish co-horts. He plans to rob an Indian Casino on Christmas Eve with the assistance of Rudy who he thinks is Nick who, according to what he wrote in the letters to Ashley, used to work as a guard in the Indian casino. Though by the end, the film pulls the rug out from under us so frequently that everything I've described might as well be irrelevant.
This is what you can expect should you chose to take this Reindeer on; several scenes in which, after catching his prey, the bad guy proceeds to stall interminably until the good guy has a chance to kill his captor and crack a stupid one-liner. Included: Two (2) scenes of two (2) different bad guys explaining their motives to the hero when they should be killing him (one following the other no less). Though it's an action film, the ending is more a talkfest where we get the whole movie explained to us by one flustered character actor after another while Affleck looks on, incredulous as the audience.
The flick was directed by John Frankenheimer, a straightforward action director who lucked into THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE early in his career, fell off the A-list following a string of flops and now, in his old age, is slowly climbing his way back up. It would be a success story if he were choosing better scripts but his last major film was RONIN (one of those almost but not quite movies) which followed THE ISLAND OF DR.MORNEAU (you remember, the one with Marlon Brando in mime make-up and a not so flattering moo-moo), and now this. He films action sequences with a minimum of quick cutting which I like considering that nowadays action scenes are commonly comprised of millisecond flash cuts strung together and laid out for a brain-zapped MTV audience to pick apart. Problem is these action scenes (nearly all failed escapes) serve no purpose in the story other than to further pad out the running time and to remind the audience that their watching an action movie rather than a filmed radio play.
Character problems abound; Rudy is made to shift between sweet boy next door earnestness and hard edged wiseacre, the latter of which is not (at least at this point) something Ben Affleck is capable of pulling off. The former he can do with ease and often the actor coasts on his lackadaisical charm while those around him growl and swear. But then suddenly Affleck starts growling and swearing alongside them like the class clown imitating a Tarantino gangster.
Charlize Theron, an extraordinary talent, is, like Affleck, playing whatever part the script requires her to play, whether it be vulnerability at one moment, anger at the next. She never has a chance to evince any charm or make much of an impression beyond her obvious physical attributes (Frankenheimer has her needlessly pop her top to further italicize this.
Gary Sinise has played this role frequently, and here, as in SNAKE EYES, he does the snarling bad guy thing with such over the top vitriol (the guy must be so incredibly bored of stomping through the same paces that going out of control is the only thing that keeps him interested any more), that it becomes more of an annoyance (oh there he goes again…) than a threat. These are talented people who made the mistake of jumping on to a script with little but stock characters and a bag of tricks that it dully springs on its audience.
http://www.geocities.com/incongruity98 Reeling (Ron Small)
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