Great 1st Half, Awful 2nd

Rating: 5/10 (24 May 2020)

A nice premise but soon fizzled out to become yet another lame thriller and a quite dreadful final act.
Douglas is fairly decent here, simply by recalling his Gordon Gekko (Wall Street) character, along with a splash of his D-Fens (Falling Down) character, and just a pinch of Stephen Hardin (Star Chamber).
But the big problem is the uneven plot, which starts out with great promise seeing an arrogant and extremely rich businessman fall on hard times thanks to the mechanics of The Game. He is completely aware of what is going on, but he doesn't appreciate just how far and how dangerous it will play with him. Just like being in a nightmare that you cannot wake yourself out of.
But the plot become rather hackneyed come the second half, primarily because its just another cat & mouse thriller that has been done to death elsewhere. The cleverness of the first half is somewhat undone come the "join the dots" amateur-hour of the second.
And the least said about the final 10 minutes the better because that really did insult the intelligence of the average viewer with its cop-out ending. For example, after shooting his brother on the rooftop he decides to commit suicide by jumping off the edge. But it was just purely coincidental that he should fall in exactly the right place to fall through the glass roof and straight onto a waiting air cushion, suffering only minor cuts. How did the people organsing The Game, know he would attempt the suicide on exactly the right spot on the roof and to fall on the exact spot on the air cushion?
Moreover, because it was just a game, nothing had really changed because he would soon return to normal life - rich and arrogant with perhaps a touch of much needed humility at the end of it. But in essence I really couldn't have cared less whether this guy lived or died because of who he was and how he treated people. But blame that on the script!
Oh, and Sean Penn is totally wasted here. He is not my favorite actor by far, but he does have considerable talent when fully utilized - but it was left wanting here.
And to cap it off, the soundtrack is absolutely appalling - straight out of a 1970s murder mystery TV movie, with what sounds like an incredibly bored pianist randomly pounding on the keys!
This Game should have been abandoned at half time!