In 1992, director David Fincher made his feature debut with the long-awaited Alien 3 and met with a savaging by critics and audiences alike. It's doubtful if anyone thought they would hear from Fincher again after this reception.
Three years later he hit back with the Brad Pitt/Morgan Freeman film Seven, probably the best thriller of the Nineties. Suddenly Fincher became the critics' darling; everyone seemed to conveniently forget his earlier effort and, if they did remember it, of course it was because of problems with the producers/screenplay/studio. Fincher was hailed as one of the best of the new breed of directors and Seven received some of the best reviews of the year. The Game, then, had a lot of expectations to live up to.
Michael Douglas stars as Nicholas Van Orton, an investment banker without much to live for - he's rich, but is also divorced, lives alone and has no life to speak of. On his 48th birthday, his younger brother Conrad (Sean Penn) gives him a gift certificate for Consumer Recreation Services, a company that specialises in entertaining clients. That's pretty much all Nicholas knows about them when he decides, after much reservation, to pay them visit, which doesn't help him in figuring out just what it is they do. Not long after, though, his life is turned upside down by a series of freakish events.
Douglas gives one of his best performances here. I've never been a huge fan of his, so it was a pleasure to see him in the sort of role that Harrison Ford could have made his own. In fact, it reminded me somewhat of Ford's earlier Frantic, with both main characters not knowing just what the hell is going on around them.
Penn appears briefly but is terrific. Jodie Foster was considered for this role, which makes no sense at all. Foster, admirable actress though she is, could not in a million years acquit herself, although it's probable that the part would have been rewritten to accommodate her.
I liked The Game until the much talked-about ending. I knew that there was some consternation regarding it from some critics, but I understandably refrained from finding out what it was until I saw the actual film. I liked the final scenes at first, but after the film finished I found that it just didn't work for me, and so it tainted the rest of the movie. This is a pity, because, for the most part, The Game is a fine psychological thriller which, while overlong and in some parts over the top, is very enjoyable. Some scenes are especially good (Nicholas' episode in the runaway taxi, for example) but, in the end, this is one of the few movies I've seen where the ending was so disappointing that the film as a whole suffered.
An admirable but disappointing effort, all the more so because it could have very easily been a truly great piece of work. A second viewing may be in order, I think.
*** out of 5
Nigel Bridgeman nigelb@powerup.com.au http://www.powerup.com.au/~nigelb/movies
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