If you can, see it for the second time, not the first.

Rating: 9/10 (6 August 2002)

Or you can read on and let me give away the movie's secrets. I don't really advise this. I suspect you can't watch "The Game" as if for the second time unless you really are watching it for the second time; reading about it in advance probably isn't good enough. Anyway, in some sense or other, there are serious spoilers ahead. You have been warned.
The real secret, saved for the very end, is this: it really IS all a game, every minute of it. CRS is exactly what it presents itself as being at the start. Corollary: Nicholas is never more deeply deceived than when he thinks he's penetrated the illusion and discovered the true purpose behind the game. The secret behind the game is that there is no secret behind the game. It's all just a game.
All very clever, but it makes for a deeply unsatisfying set of "twists". The real twist is that there ARE no real twists - and deep down, we sense as much. There are only ever two possibilities before us: that things are as they appear to be to Nicholas at that time, or that it's all just a game; and since we're introduced to the possibility that it's all just a game right at the start, we can never really let go of that possibility, and consequently we can never feel particularly surprised at any particular revelation or supposed revelation - least of all the revelation that it's all just a game. If we'd been given access to information Nicholas HADN'T been given access to, information which let us KNOW that it was all a game, the cleverness of the deceit would have been far more enjoyable. And the movie's key moment would have come across far stronger. If we'd been half-identifying with the illusionists at CRS all along, then when Claire (if that's her real name) stared in alarm at Nick's pistol, and says, "You're not meant to have a real gun", this would alarm us deeply. The moment would feel more like the climax it's meant to be rather than hurried exposition. And - for just a moment - Fincher would have completely fooled us. COMPLETELY fooled us.
This doesn't happen, but as for the rest of the movie, see it for the second time and it's almost identical to the masterpiece it could have been the first time. Which means that it damned near IS a masterpiece (it's certainly, without any contest whatever, David Fincher's best film), however invisible this fact may be to first-time viewers.