Still an effective and enjoyable watch, with Douglas in his prime

Rating: 9/10 (29 July 2018)

Today I dug out the video (not DVD) collection as a kind of challenge to myself, had my attention drawn to the 1997 movie "The Game" from David Fincher (who has since gone on to several other good things), and gave the cassette a whirl through the machine for only the second time in its existence.
Doubtless we've got used to Michael Douglas doing this kind of thing but here in "The Game" he is in - shall we say - his "middle period", and the film very largely hangs on what he can bring to it - which is plenty. His character Nicholas Van Orton goes a little past cliche, which is nice. Although he's an investment banker (which goes without saying, I guess), and although he's doubtless good at what he does, there's actually a good dose of clumsiness, fear and self-doubt - even self-loathing - just below the surface here, as well as plenty of loneliness right on the surface; yet when things go off the rails (as they regularly do in a Michael Douglas film) he's not THAT effective, but actually a bit of stumblebum.
This does much to endear him to us.
The plot is well into the realms of fantasy - and you'd do VERY well to ignore the more-thoughtful morality side - but somehow it's darned good - even 21 years down the line. Carried out with conviction and seeking out what are (apparently) a host of great San Francisco locations most (though crucially not all) of which are definitely on the wrong side of the tracks; it proves great fun (especially as we in the audience get all the benefits of what happens here without having to take on ANY of the risks). In that way it gets to be quite a rollercoaster ride, with moments of comedy and thrills and spills all thrown in).
Interesting how times change - in a more recent film we would surely have expected more from "Christine" (a fascinating enough character played here by Deborah Kara Unger) - in this respect some of our wishes go rather unfulfilled! Even Sean Penn doesn't do that much, though he's OK when on-screen. Personally, I've always had a soft spot for "the" character that James Rebhorn plays, so that's a reward for me at least, as he gets quite a bit of screentime.
But in the end it's mainly down to Douglas as Van Orton, and this is not entirely by chance given the nature of the film, which can be watched and enjoyed with no problem whatever in 2018.