Review of The Game (1997) by Jacob M — 10 Apr 2013

I love a movie with a good twist, who doesn't right? Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, and even Matchstick Men, I love them. I think it's really mind blowing when there is all this build up to a secret that is slowly, but surely, unraveling but then you get something that still makes sense, but that you weren't at all expecting. It's fun, but it's harder to do then it sounds. You can't just have something come out of the blue that may be surprising, but may not be thrilling. That brings me to my problem with this movie.

The Game is, for the most part, a stylistic and thrilling film that has a lot of highs but sadly it does have one earthshaking low, it's ending. *SPOILER ALERT* I had this problem with another movie called American Psycho. The whole movie is this build up toward something grand and all you get is a mindless twist. Now this movie's twist may not have been as mindless as everything being a hallucination, or a dream, or whatever, but it still didn't cut it to keep me wanting more and satisfy my hunger for a shocking ending. I want to want more of the story, and don't get me wrong, it is a good one and I recommend you see this, but it wasn't enough. The ending is that the whole CRS thing is all for Michael Douglas' birthday. Why would the characters go through all of that? They give a stupid answer to have Douglas stop being so up-tight, but it's kind of lazy.

This movie was good. It was for the most part interesting and very well made. I will see anything David Fincher puts on the table. The acting from Douglas and Penn was spectacular and the noir cinematography is always good to the eyes. It has it's flaws, but I still recommend you see it.