David Fincher has done better works than this movie, but The Game is
interesting and remarkable for reasons outside of the usual fantastic
cinematography and acting, namely the way it plays with the viewer’s
expectations and the whole general idea of storytelling. This is at once a
serious film and a bit of a farce, dually a suspenseful thrill ride and perhaps
the greatest attempt at pulling the wool over the eyes of the audience I’ve
ever seen. But it’s one thing to tell you that, and quite another to actually
explain myself, so let’s go ahead and do that.
Director: David Fincher
Starring: Michael Douglas, Deborah Kara Unger, Sean Penn
Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119174/
The Game’s basic premise is that Michael Douglas plays a rich
billionaire named Nicholas Van Orton who gets a present from his derelict
brother, inviting him to participate in a ‘game’ with a strange company called
CRS. The film quickly turns into a high speed paranoid thriller in which Orton
and a young, mysterious woman named Christine (or is that her real name at
all?) embark on a wild ride of conspiracies, betrayals and twists that build up
like a rising wave.
The film’s pace is fast and fluid, moving seamlessly from one thrill to
the next, and as such, its 2+ hour runtime flies by like nothing. What I like
about this movie on the surface is that it feels like a descent into madness,
slowly becoming more and more alarming and surreal as it goes on until the
electrifying climax. This is a very tense movie that never lets up, and for
that it’s addictive.
As it goes on, we see Nicholas thrown into a bay in a speeding, out of
control taxi. We see him in one particularly chilling scene stranded with
nothing in the desert wastelands around Mexico, reduced to a beggar, without
any of his riches or charm. These scenes are beautifully shot and add to the
diversity of the film, pulling the viewer in and making him or her take notice.
At this point, the Mexican detour, the movie is unquestionably bleak
and looks to be a commentary on the follies of the rich, and how they can be
brought down to the level of the paupers they ignore. Right? Not exactly. After
Nicholas gets back to the city, he tracks down the people who put him in the ‘game’
and puts them at gunpoint, especially the traitorous Christine, who suddenly gets
very hesitant and jumpy…
The plot twist is finally revealed – the whole thing has been a huge
set-up for Nicholas’s birthday party! Nothing that has happened is real at all,
or at the very least, is dangerous at
all. The entire movie has basically been a big joke. This is not a comedic
film, nor has it given you any real context or set-up for what it does at the
ending, so really it becomes an incredibly bizarre film that plays with its
audience like nothing else I’ve ever seen. It becomes funny by virtue of being
so out-of-left-field, so surreal. The whole film was previously set up on
nail-biting suspense and outrageous tension – until the ending reveals it all
to be a big farce. This is really a brilliant way to take the piss out of the
audience’s expectations. I can understand why some people hate it, but really
it’s great by virtue of just coming out of nowhere! This is an ending nobody
would ever expect, and for that it is genius. Wry, tongue-in-cheek, whimsical
genius, yes, but genius all the same. Hats off to Fincher for another winner of
a movie.
All images copyright of their original owners. I do not own any of them.
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