The Game (1997)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

A psychological thriller, a cat and mouse game, that is ultimately pointless.

What I'll say about "The Game" is what I say about a lot of action/thriller films. As you're watching, the story engages with an innovative concept, uses clever twists and delivers excitement at a visceral level. But then, when you have time to reflect on the story, it kind of falls apart when you consider what would have been required to pull it all off. This one relied on Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) to make the decisions precisely that he did, especially at the very end when his attempted suicide was thwarted to put an end to the game. How did the 'Game' manipulators know he would even think of something like that? Sure they ran that psychological profile, but by the time came when he shot his brother Conrad (Sean Penn), Van Orton's judgment would have been severely put to the limit to act rationally. There's also the complexity of the set-ups, which would have required months of planning and getting the right players in place to pull off the Game. No way could it have been rigged during the amount of time allotted for Van Orton to begin the game as soon as he signed off on it. And how about a situation like the one in which the taxi driver bailed and the cab plunged into the river? One assumes that the assassin bullets were blanks and the shattered objects that were hit were set off with miniature explosives, but how would you explain Van Orton making his way out of the sinking cab in time to avoid drowning? It all requires a major suspension of disbelief to view the events happening on screen as if they were actually possible.And finally, who would have come up with the price tag for this extraordinary con job? Conrad didn't appear to have the means to pull it off, which leads us to the idea that Nicholas Van Orton would probably have had to foot the bill to scare the living crap out of himself. With that kind of money, he could have gotten himself a real birthday present.

Movie Review: "The Game" (1997)Director David Fincher taking a seemingly-simplistic plot and makes into a thriller of superlatives with every scene revealing as disguising pieces of a threading puzzle of life-and-death situations for ultra-rich in money, but low on character Nicholas Van Orton, exceptionally compelling portrayed by Michael Douglas, who carries the picture on his shoulders in the director's signature-defining suspense-techniques, which become even more classy in "The Game" fulfilling attempt of maturity, when preceeding "Se7en" (1995) and succeeding "Fight Club" (1999) must remain striking strokes of a director's youth."The Game" in retrospective tells its original story written by co-writers John Brancato & Michael Ferris in eye-catching high-concept fashions with respect to enterprising as daring producers Céan Chaffin and Steve Golin raising a 50-Million-Dollar production budget for 34-year-old David Fincher in order to let him exceed the page with exceptional-elegant cinematography by Harry Savides (1957-2012) and production design by Jeffrey Beecroft, who so fulminated ranges his art directions efforts from neo-realism to hyper-synthesizing science-fiction scenarios in future-wising "Transformers: Age of Extinction" (2014) for director Michael Bay, when here every single film-making department falls into place to the most intriguing as entertaining thriller of the 1990s.Futhermore supporting cast members, including Sean Penn as distressed as exaggerating brother Conrad over Deborah Kara Unger as poker-face mimicking even in jeans seductively-sexy Christine to Armin Mueller-Stahl as further trails-laying Anson Baer, when Michael Douglas delivers with all his skill of method to splendid moment of improvisition a picture to be marked as arguably the best of his now up to five decades spanning career.© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Michael Douglas' performance superbly holds this film together. Now matter how ludicrous the plot becomes - and it does become ludicrous - Douglas plays it so that he and the audience together are none the wiser and piece it together at the same speed. Although it seemed highly original to me at first, in fact its plot owes a lot to the 1984 Remington Steele episode 'Elementary Steele'. The fact that punters have paid £500 to a business so as to take part in 'The Game' where a mystery is laid out for them around the city to solve; the fact that it starts to look like a scam; that the punters (playing Holmes and Watson) chase someone who they think is part of The Game but she protests she is not, and says she is just an actress, when she clearly knows more than she is letting on; plus. gunshots fired (at Remington Steele) in the street turn out to be blanks because the gun is part of the Game; plus, when Remington Steele visits the business's offices (doing his detective there), he finds almost no-one and nothing in the room (basic office furniture); etc, etc. All these things are developed in the Michael Douglas film, turning a light romp into a dark thriller that keeps you guessing. Highly entertaining and tense. It's increasingly less and less plausible but Douglas keeps you believing, just.