The Game (1997)

"It's basically the biggest mind-fuck you can think of" - David Fincher

I will say this for "The Game." When you walk out of the film, you're one paranoid motherfucker. You question everything that people say to you. You wonder what your friends ulterior motives are when they ask you a question like, "Wanna go get a pizza?" In the parking lot as you leave the multiplex, when a car starts next to you, you wonder who started it and why. You don't believe anyone or anything anymore.

That being said, the film fails at it's attempt to be a cinematic mind-fuck. At least it did for me. I saw the "Twilight Zone"-esque ending coming and was not surprised when it evolved. I always knew what was real and when the game would end.

See, the plot involves a typical uptight businessman getting a birthday present from his equally wealthy yet layabout younger brother. The present is a game, a test of psychological will if you will. The body of the film is two hours of the older brother involved in a plot of psychological terrorism that is obvious and slight. If director David Fincher had added a little twist at the end, something to make you unsure if the game were over, then it might succeed.

The actors in the film are adequate but break no new ground. Michael Douglas plays the older bother as kind of a bastard child begotten by his characters in "Wall Street" and "Falling Down." Sean Penn, as the younger brother, makes his most normal character in quite some time. Still, he also gains no new ground here. There are small parts played by Carroll Baker and Armin Mueller-Stahl but they generally only serve to showcase two actors that we are curious about, one because she is an oddity, the other because he is a great unknown actor.

Fincher is adept here but his style isn't tested. He presents all that he can given the limited groundwork of the script in a manner that is adequate and pristine. But there is nothing along the lines of his beautiful images in "seven" or "Alien 3" to take our breath away. He does use the old "home movies as flashbacks" device quite effectively. However, his decision to punctuate the film with tinkly piano music throughout makes the piece numbing and insufferable, not neurotic as he had hoped. It irritates rather that accentuates.

Still, the real failure here is the script by John D. Brancato, Michael Ferris, and Andrew Kevin Walker. The later scripted Fincher's masterpiece "seven." The script doesn't delve deep enough into the psychological makeup of Douglas' character, Nicholas Van Orten. We only know enough to slightly accept what happens here, nothing more. With a script full of much more psychological complexities, the film could have been a major success. As it is, we have to be force-fed the justification for the film's final climax. There is a missed opportunity here for the film to be a riveting, complex, paranoid, schizophrenic, frenetic masterpiece.

The Scene that Remains Douglas crashing through the glass roof.

Note:

Also with Deborah Kara Unger and James Rebhorn.

Jodie Foster was to play the Penn role at one time.

(Review written in 1997)

Report Card

Script: C-

Acting: B

Cinematography\Lighting: C

Special Effects\Make Up: A

Music: D-

Final Grade: C-