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The Game (1997)
A relentlessly frightening story and the uncompromising directorial style of David Fincher make a logic-defying nightmare from 1997 called The Game riveting motion picture entertainment, even if we don't always have a clear picture as to what exactly is going on.
Michael Douglas stars as Nicholas Van Orton, a wealthy investment banker who reunites with his estranged brother, Conrad (Sean Penn) on his 48th birthday. Conrad gives his brother a gift certificate for a special "game" from a mysterious entertainment company called Consumer Recreation Services. After a long and involved registration process for the game, it is not long before Nicholas finds himself caught in the middle of a hellish nightmare
The screenplay for this enigmatic film experience is from the writers of The Net and Terminator 3, rich with red herrings everywhere, consistently offering more questions than answering them. We know that something's not right when we see that elaborate registration process that Nicholas has to go through and all of the questions that he has to answer. IRL, most people would have run screaming for the hills during that testing process, but if Nicholas had done that, we wouldn't have had a movie.
The most frightening aspect of this story is the power that Consumer Recreation Services is able to wield over Van Orton simply through the information they gleaned during the testing. Most frightening is the fact that setting up Nicholas' game took just a little over 24 hours and I loved that they told him he was deemed ineligible so that he didn't see it coming.
Once again, David Fincher's direction is inventive, providing arresting visuals and an air of tension that pervades the film from opening credits to the somewhat hard to swallow ending. Michael Douglas offers one of his best performances as Van Orton and gets solid support from Deborah Kara Unger, Peter Donat, James Rebhorn, and Carroll Baker. Sadly, Penn is wasted in a surprisingly thankless role, but just like he did with Fight Club, David Fincher takes a confusing and muddy story and makes it sparkle.
A relentlessly frightening story and the uncompromising directorial style of David Fincher make a logic-defying nightmare from 1997 called The Game riveting motion picture entertainment, even if we don't always have a clear picture as to what exactly is going on.
Michael Douglas stars as Nicholas Van Orton, a wealthy investment banker who reunites with his estranged brother, Conrad (Sean Penn) on his 48th birthday. Conrad gives his brother a gift certificate for a special "game" from a mysterious entertainment company called Consumer Recreation Services. After a long and involved registration process for the game, it is not long before Nicholas finds himself caught in the middle of a hellish nightmare
The screenplay for this enigmatic film experience is from the writers of The Net and Terminator 3, rich with red herrings everywhere, consistently offering more questions than answering them. We know that something's not right when we see that elaborate registration process that Nicholas has to go through and all of the questions that he has to answer. IRL, most people would have run screaming for the hills during that testing process, but if Nicholas had done that, we wouldn't have had a movie.
The most frightening aspect of this story is the power that Consumer Recreation Services is able to wield over Van Orton simply through the information they gleaned during the testing. Most frightening is the fact that setting up Nicholas' game took just a little over 24 hours and I loved that they told him he was deemed ineligible so that he didn't see it coming.
Once again, David Fincher's direction is inventive, providing arresting visuals and an air of tension that pervades the film from opening credits to the somewhat hard to swallow ending. Michael Douglas offers one of his best performances as Van Orton and gets solid support from Deborah Kara Unger, Peter Donat, James Rebhorn, and Carroll Baker. Sadly, Penn is wasted in a surprisingly thankless role, but just like he did with Fight Club, David Fincher takes a confusing and muddy story and makes it sparkle.