Where As Once I Was Blind, Now I Can See

Rating: 8/10 (6 June 2006)

****SPOILERS**** Multi-millionaire investment banker Nicholas Van Orton, Michael Douglas,has worked his way up to the top in the ruthless and dog eat dog world of high finance and corporate investments that he lost all contact with his feeling for his fellow human beings. Approching his 48th birthday Nick is very unsteady about his future in that back in 1959 when he father was 48 he committed suicide by jumping to his death after he was wiped out financially in the stock market.
Meeting his younger brother Conrad, Sean Penn, who had just been released from a substance abuse rehabilitation center at a local members-only restaurant in San Francisco Nick is given a strange birthday present by him; an all-expense paid invitation to be involved in a game sponsored by this agency called CRS. Nick promises Conrad that he'll look into to it and that's all. Nick did apply to be in the game and the game, and what Nick lived through playing it, changed his life and attitude of himself and his fellow human beings forever as well as for the better.
Things happen so fast and so unexpectedly that you,like Nick,never have time to get a grip of what's going on, not only to him but those he's involved with. Nick ends up getting into a number of life threatening situations in both San Francisco and later after waking up in a cemetery, in a coffin, across the border in Mexico.
Starting with a wild scene in a restaurant as Nick gets involved with a waitress Christine, Deborah Kara Unger, who spilled a glass of water on him. Nick and Christine end up being chased all over San Francisco by these unknown gunmen with Nick losing her and then later, after finding Christine, Nick also finds out that she's involved in whatever is happening to him. Nick, battered bloodied and totally confused makes his way back hitch-hiking from Mexico all the way to San Francisco. Finding his way to the offices of CRS Nick not only end up getting a double-shock to his system he's also hit by the true reasons that all these dangerous and near-fatal events were happening to him all throughout the movie!
You have at some times in the move "The Game" to suspend reality to fully enjoy it. Which isn't that hard with the story keeping you so involved to what's happening that you easily overlook it's many inconsistencies.
Every move that Nick makes seems to be monitored by the goons at CRS. Just when he thinks that he's finally got a handle to what happening to him and how to stop it, even at the cost of his life, the biggest surprise in a movie full of surprises hits him like a ton of brick. This happens after he falls some 30 floors and crashes through the skylight of a restaurant! It's there where everyone involved in the game being played on Nick are ready to wish him a happy 48th birthday.
You have to click on your seat-belt and put on your crash helmet to be able watch and sit through the movie but in the end you'll feel that it was more then worth it. The film makes it worth your while by getting, Nick and everyone in it, what has to be one of the most heart-stopping and hair-rising rides of your life.