The Game (1997)
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The Game Movie Review
The Game is a 1997 thriller film directed by David Fincher and starring Michael Douglas. It is an inconsistent, but authentic piece of suspense genre filmmaking.
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“I am extremely fragile right now“
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After a wealthy San Francisco banker is given an opportunity to participate in a mysterious game, his life is turned upside down as he begins to question if it might really be a concealed conspiracy to destroy him. This was the third directorial effort for Fincher and a film that is mostly respected nowadays, but criticized by some for its plot holes.
I find it to be very good, albeit not as great as some of the other Fincher works. It is also very different from his other movies, which is mostly a good thing as he showed some refreshing versatility here. It’s not fair to the movie to say this, but I realized the twist very early on, which is why the ending wasn’t effective to me. The whole story I found to be predictable, and thus not as intense as it was intended to be.
But again, that isn’t really fair. As a cinephile with two thousand movies in my watched list, of course I am bound to find every film predictable and not all that exciting. Another somewhat unfair criticism that I direct toward this movie is the fact that I simply don’t care for rich people. They are alien to me and certainly very unlikable, which is why I never could sympathize with this guy, and I certainly did not root for him.
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With that being said, what Michael Douglas did here was truly remarkable in one of his career-best roles. His Nicholas is given so much personality, anxiety and complexities due to Douglas’ carefully nuanced, powerful performance. In particular, he played the vulnerable side of the character gloriously, especially his fears and insecurities. It was thrilling watching him here as he was perfectly cast and he delivered in spades.
The Game doesn’t really have that many characters besides him. Sean Penn was pretty memorable as his brother who is in the game itself while Deborah Kara Unger is excellent and very effective as his love interest. She should have received more big roles in the future as she was excellent here.
I appreciated how everybody was so well organized and how the game seemed believably dangerous to the protagonist. The highlight for me was that car sequence, which was brilliantly executed and so intense. As for that much-talked about ending, I personally did not find it to be all that bad, though it was clunky and implausible in the suicide angle. Still though, it fitted the overall narrative and the twist worked. It’s just that I got it very early on, so the surprise angle wasn’t present for me.
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The Game is superbly crafted on multiple levels. Fincher’s directing is reliably confident while the editing is also terrific, though the movie can become a bit repetitive in the scenarios and a bit too convenient. I wished for more dangerous scenarios myself. Still, the RPG survival video game narrative was very original for the time and it still is authentic as there aren’t that many movies like this one out there. Meticulously crafted production design and a beautifully eerie score made for such a great thriller atmosphere.
