The Game. (15.)
Directed by David Fincher. 1997.
Starring Michael Douglas, Deborah Kara Unger, James Rebhorn, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Peter Donat and Sean Penn. Out on limited edition Blu-ray/ DVD from Arrow Academy. 129 mins.
David Fincher is such a master filmmaker that even his rubbish films are really good. The Game is a cunning, edge of your seat thrill ride; audiences are caught up in the suspense of wondering if the film is going to actually drop the h-bomb of stupidity that hangs over its every moment. And Sorry, but this review is going to be full of spoilers and will be giving away the ending. Sorry again, hate to do it, but the whole film rests on its last few minutes.
Fincher is one of Hollywood's most accomplished director, a technical perfectionist who can take dark, edgy material and make it palatable to wider audiences. A great director, without the great career to match. His reputation really rests on two films for the 90s – Se7en and Fight Club. (His debut, Alien3 is actually pretty good, at least in the Special Edition version available on the Alien Quadrilogy boxset.) This century he has made plenty of proficient films but even the really great ones have a kind of aimlessness to them. Gone Girl is as fine a literary adaptation as Fight Club, but it doesn't offer you anything you couldn't get from reading Gillian Flynn's compulsive page turner, other than a few more hours of free time, which is not the case with his Palahnuik adaptation. Most of his films are about him trying to overcome some hurdle – a whodunnit with no answer in Zodiac; a thriller in a confined space with Panic Room; making jargon-filled techno squabble courtroom drama interesting with Social Network – but other than the satisfaction of having done it, it's hard to see the reason for most of them. What motivates him, what pushes him to work so hard? Why follow Fight Club with Panic Room? Why reverse age Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button? What did he gain from doing the American Girl With A Dragon Tattoo? But much more than all of those, why oh why did he want to do The Game?
Made between Se7en and Fight Club, it is a belated entry into the Yuppie nightmare genre, popular in the 80s with films like After Hours and Something Wild. Michael Douglas is a very nasty, workaholic, filthy rich banker, who just lives to work and is about to make that nice old children publisher Mr Mueller-Stahl redundant. Perhaps the suicide of his father made him so cold? For his birthday his younger brother Penn hands him a card for a mysterious company Consumer Recreation Services and says that if he rings them he will be part of a game. When he does his life begins to fall apart and he finds himself trapped in a conspiracy that is out to ruin and possibly kill him.
Now all of this is perfectly fine; a well-played, nicely shot, tense and exciting paranoia thriller. But, because of the title, all the time you can't relax into the film because you're wondering how they can convincingly finish it. It can't all be a game, can it? Douglas nearly dies when a taxi he's in crashes into the bay and his actions are far too random to be conforming to some pattern controlled by a mysterious role-playing company. Even allowing for all the psych test and evaluations performed on Douglas after he goes to the CRS offices, you'd need to be God Almighty to have that degree of foresight and control. Plus, this whole elaborate and costly scam is supposed conceived and set up within a few days. So It can't all just be a big game, can it?
When I was at school we had an English teacher who would forbid us finishing compositions with, “and then I woke up and it was all a dream.” Quite right too, it is the lamest ending possible – apart from the ending of The Game. Michael Douglas is quoted as saying that “what I’m most proud about is that it’s one of the very few movies that you could not guess the ending.” Which is true but only because you'd never believe that so many smart, intelligent people could dream of trying to fob us off with something so ridiculous. (Also, why do so many smart, intelligent people seem happy to be fobbed off with something so ridiculous? The movie wasn't much of a hit on its release but has a decent critical reputation and a 7.8 IMDB score.) I remember seeing it on its release and emerging from a weekday matinee with a friend loudly indignant. I think I may even have tried to demand my money back and warn off waiting customers from seeing it. More than two decades on I wondered if the reaction would still be the same and though much calmer, I think it fundamentally was.
What were they thinking of? Helpfully, the Arrow Academy disc has an interview with its scriptwriter John Brancato who says that the script idea came out of a bout of depression brought on by frustration with how his screenwriting career was going. He wondered about a service that could get people out of such a self-imposed misery and the challenge of writing something that moved from the darkest possible place to the happiest possible place in less than a minute.
It's an interesting challenge but the film doesn't pull it off. The betrayal of the ending is not the plot holes and implausibility, it's the emotional betrayal. The ending is fundamentally the look, there's-the-hidden-camera moment in Beadles About when the scam is revealed and the victim goes from extreme anger or irritation to joy and laughter. The idea that he could go from jumping from the top of a skyscraper to his death to contented acceptance, having a drink at the bar, D'oh you really got me there bruv and oh-I'm-better-now and have learnt the error of my materialistic way is a slap in the audience's face. Suckers- you just pissed away two hours watching something that was meaningless. And please don't start lecturing me on suspension of disbelief: suspension of disbelief is not the responsibility of the audience, it's on the filmmakers.
Brancato said that originally his script had been a bit lighter, that the Game was initially fun and only got darker later. Fincher, stuck in a grove, got his Se7ev scriptwriter in to paint it black and that surely sunk it. You have to offer audiences a bit of levity if you are going to try and pull off something as cheeky as the ending of The Game.
Extras
2K restoration from the original negative by The Criterion Collection supervised and approved by director David Fincher and cinematographer Harris Savides • High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentation • Original 5.1 & 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio • Isolated Music & Effects track • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing • New audio commentary by critic and programmer Nick Pinkerton • Fool's Week: Developing The Game, a newly filmed interview with co-writer John Brancato • Men On The Chessboard: The Hidden Pleasures of The Game, a new visual essay by critic Neil Young • Archive promotional interview with star Michael Douglas from 1997 • Alternatively-framed 4:3 version prepared for home video (SD only), with a new introduction discussing Fincher's use of the Super 35 shooting format • Theatrical trailer • Teaser trailer • Image gallery
DISC TWO – DVD
• Standard definition DVD (PAL) presentation
• 5.1 Dolby Digital audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary with director David Fincher, actor Michael Douglas, screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris, director of photography Harris Savides, production designer Jeffrey Beecroft and visual effects supervisor Kevin Haug
• Behind The Scenes featurettes - Dog Chase, The Taxi, Christine’s House, The Fall (with optional commentary by Fincher, Douglas, Savides, Beecroft and Haug)
• On Location featurettes – Exterior Parking Lot: Blue Screen Shot, Exterior Fioli Mansion: Father’s Death, Interior CRS Lobby and Offices, Interior Fioli Mansion: Vandalism, Exterior Mexican Cemetary (with optional commentary by Fincher, Savides, Beecroft and Haug)
• Theatrical trailer (with optional commentary by Fincher)
• Teaser trailer
• Teaser trailer CGI test footage (with optional commentary by designer/animator Richard Baily)
• Alternate ending
• Production design and storyboard galleries.
Directed by David Fincher. 1997.
Starring Michael Douglas, Deborah Kara Unger, James Rebhorn, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Peter Donat and Sean Penn. Out on limited edition Blu-ray/ DVD from Arrow Academy. 129 mins.
David Fincher is such a master filmmaker that even his rubbish films are really good. The Game is a cunning, edge of your seat thrill ride; audiences are caught up in the suspense of wondering if the film is going to actually drop the h-bomb of stupidity that hangs over its every moment. And Sorry, but this review is going to be full of spoilers and will be giving away the ending. Sorry again, hate to do it, but the whole film rests on its last few minutes.
Fincher is one of Hollywood's most accomplished director, a technical perfectionist who can take dark, edgy material and make it palatable to wider audiences. A great director, without the great career to match. His reputation really rests on two films for the 90s – Se7en and Fight Club. (His debut, Alien3 is actually pretty good, at least in the Special Edition version available on the Alien Quadrilogy boxset.) This century he has made plenty of proficient films but even the really great ones have a kind of aimlessness to them. Gone Girl is as fine a literary adaptation as Fight Club, but it doesn't offer you anything you couldn't get from reading Gillian Flynn's compulsive page turner, other than a few more hours of free time, which is not the case with his Palahnuik adaptation. Most of his films are about him trying to overcome some hurdle – a whodunnit with no answer in Zodiac; a thriller in a confined space with Panic Room; making jargon-filled techno squabble courtroom drama interesting with Social Network – but other than the satisfaction of having done it, it's hard to see the reason for most of them. What motivates him, what pushes him to work so hard? Why follow Fight Club with Panic Room? Why reverse age Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button? What did he gain from doing the American Girl With A Dragon Tattoo? But much more than all of those, why oh why did he want to do The Game?
Made between Se7en and Fight Club, it is a belated entry into the Yuppie nightmare genre, popular in the 80s with films like After Hours and Something Wild. Michael Douglas is a very nasty, workaholic, filthy rich banker, who just lives to work and is about to make that nice old children publisher Mr Mueller-Stahl redundant. Perhaps the suicide of his father made him so cold? For his birthday his younger brother Penn hands him a card for a mysterious company Consumer Recreation Services and says that if he rings them he will be part of a game. When he does his life begins to fall apart and he finds himself trapped in a conspiracy that is out to ruin and possibly kill him.
Now all of this is perfectly fine; a well-played, nicely shot, tense and exciting paranoia thriller. But, because of the title, all the time you can't relax into the film because you're wondering how they can convincingly finish it. It can't all be a game, can it? Douglas nearly dies when a taxi he's in crashes into the bay and his actions are far too random to be conforming to some pattern controlled by a mysterious role-playing company. Even allowing for all the psych test and evaluations performed on Douglas after he goes to the CRS offices, you'd need to be God Almighty to have that degree of foresight and control. Plus, this whole elaborate and costly scam is supposed conceived and set up within a few days. So It can't all just be a big game, can it?
When I was at school we had an English teacher who would forbid us finishing compositions with, “and then I woke up and it was all a dream.” Quite right too, it is the lamest ending possible – apart from the ending of The Game. Michael Douglas is quoted as saying that “what I’m most proud about is that it’s one of the very few movies that you could not guess the ending.” Which is true but only because you'd never believe that so many smart, intelligent people could dream of trying to fob us off with something so ridiculous. (Also, why do so many smart, intelligent people seem happy to be fobbed off with something so ridiculous? The movie wasn't much of a hit on its release but has a decent critical reputation and a 7.8 IMDB score.) I remember seeing it on its release and emerging from a weekday matinee with a friend loudly indignant. I think I may even have tried to demand my money back and warn off waiting customers from seeing it. More than two decades on I wondered if the reaction would still be the same and though much calmer, I think it fundamentally was.
What were they thinking of? Helpfully, the Arrow Academy disc has an interview with its scriptwriter John Brancato who says that the script idea came out of a bout of depression brought on by frustration with how his screenwriting career was going. He wondered about a service that could get people out of such a self-imposed misery and the challenge of writing something that moved from the darkest possible place to the happiest possible place in less than a minute.
It's an interesting challenge but the film doesn't pull it off. The betrayal of the ending is not the plot holes and implausibility, it's the emotional betrayal. The ending is fundamentally the look, there's-the-hidden-camera moment in Beadles About when the scam is revealed and the victim goes from extreme anger or irritation to joy and laughter. The idea that he could go from jumping from the top of a skyscraper to his death to contented acceptance, having a drink at the bar, D'oh you really got me there bruv and oh-I'm-better-now and have learnt the error of my materialistic way is a slap in the audience's face. Suckers- you just pissed away two hours watching something that was meaningless. And please don't start lecturing me on suspension of disbelief: suspension of disbelief is not the responsibility of the audience, it's on the filmmakers.
Brancato said that originally his script had been a bit lighter, that the Game was initially fun and only got darker later. Fincher, stuck in a grove, got his Se7ev scriptwriter in to paint it black and that surely sunk it. You have to offer audiences a bit of levity if you are going to try and pull off something as cheeky as the ending of The Game.
Extras
2K restoration from the original negative by The Criterion Collection supervised and approved by director David Fincher and cinematographer Harris Savides • High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentation • Original 5.1 & 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio • Isolated Music & Effects track • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing • New audio commentary by critic and programmer Nick Pinkerton • Fool's Week: Developing The Game, a newly filmed interview with co-writer John Brancato • Men On The Chessboard: The Hidden Pleasures of The Game, a new visual essay by critic Neil Young • Archive promotional interview with star Michael Douglas from 1997 • Alternatively-framed 4:3 version prepared for home video (SD only), with a new introduction discussing Fincher's use of the Super 35 shooting format • Theatrical trailer • Teaser trailer • Image gallery
DISC TWO – DVD
• Standard definition DVD (PAL) presentation
• 5.1 Dolby Digital audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary with director David Fincher, actor Michael Douglas, screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris, director of photography Harris Savides, production designer Jeffrey Beecroft and visual effects supervisor Kevin Haug
• Behind The Scenes featurettes - Dog Chase, The Taxi, Christine’s House, The Fall (with optional commentary by Fincher, Douglas, Savides, Beecroft and Haug)
• On Location featurettes – Exterior Parking Lot: Blue Screen Shot, Exterior Fioli Mansion: Father’s Death, Interior CRS Lobby and Offices, Interior Fioli Mansion: Vandalism, Exterior Mexican Cemetary (with optional commentary by Fincher, Savides, Beecroft and Haug)
• Theatrical trailer (with optional commentary by Fincher)
• Teaser trailer
• Teaser trailer CGI test footage (with optional commentary by designer/animator Richard Baily)
• Alternate ending
• Production design and storyboard galleries.
