The Game (1997)

It's a good thing director David Fincher is so articulate, because I can't think of a better way to describe his 1997 thriller The Game other than "a fashionable, good-looking Scrooge, lured into a Mission: Impossible situation with a steroid shot in the thigh from The Sting."

Michael Douglas is Nicholas Van Orton, an investment banker reminiscent of Douglas's turn as Gordon Gekko in Stone's Wall Street. A visit from Nicholas's brother Conrad (Sean Penn) sets into motion Nicholas's involvement in a game perpetrated by the shady and mysterious business Consumer Recreation Services. The game begins innocuously enough, but soon Nicholas finds himself fighting for everything - literally, everything - he has in order to win the game.

Kudos to Fincher - director of cult favorites Se7en and Fight Club - for keeping the film moving without ever really giving the audience anything concrete to latch onto. The screenplay is extra-strong here, its postponed questions facilitating the bait-and-switch Fincher deftly pulls on the audience. For two hours, the film careens from plot twist to surprise misdirection, without ever really revealing its hand until literally the last scene of the film. Fincher never gives the audience more than an inch in this one, keepng me on the edge of my seat while asking, "Okay, he's in on it? No, wait, she is? Is he? Whose side is she on?" Like Nicholas, the audience is kept in the dark for most of the film, and so the film is a great deal of fun as far as unpredictability goes.

Where performances are concerned, Douglas is superb as always. Having proved himself adept at thrillers in both Fatal Attraction and Don't Say a Word (perhaps the closest thematically to his performance here), Douglas is, to borrow a line from his co-star Sean Penn, "one of our finest." Penn does a great job in his first scene, which sets up a stark and immediate difference between the Van Orton brothers, but he's nowhere near the presence that Douglas is in the film (if memory serves, Penn only has about three or four scenes total). And Deborah Kara Unger, as a waitress who gets caught up in the game, doesn't do much but serve as a focal point for a few twists - the only ones I can profess to have seen coming.

The Game is not for everyone. It's not for those who like their movies cut and dry, black and white. It's not for those who can't handle top-notch suspense, and it's certainly not for those who get disturbed by movies that ask "How would you handle this?" It is, however, an excellent film for those of us who like a movie that keeps us guessing, that never lets up, and that is as finely crafted as a whittled whistle. The Game is delightfully always one step ahead of its audience.

The Game is rated "R for language, and for some violence and sexuality." Language consists of the occasional F-bomb, and violence begins to escalate only as the game gets closer to the finish line - neither of these are excessive because the real tension is all in your head. Sexuality comes with a few suggestive photographs that are used as part of the game.