Great idea & acting, way too unbelievable, even for a movie

Rating: 4/10 (28 August 2018)

Somehow I missed this years ago and it popped up on Netflix and like most other NF movies I tend to check IMDB reviews as a lot are duds, however this moving getting such a high review rating I had to check it out. It starts off great and has a good suspenseful feel. Sadly though around the midpoint it just gets way to unbelievable. I get that the writers / director wants to keep you guessing if this is just a game, if it's real, who's in on it, etc... and that does keep it exciting and as far as entertainment the movie does deliver, but being so unbelievable it more or less bounced me out of the movie. Plus I thought the end was cheap and way to full of holes
** Spoilers ahead ** As mentioned before, I liked how it started out, was intriguing, you definitely get the feel that the lengthy interview process and all the details within would be used against him later on, and they certainly are. It was enjoyable as he started to become paranoid about who was in on it, what was going on, etc... But then right about the point where his house is completely trashed I told myself, either it's for real and he's being discredited and on the chopping block, but that didn't add up. Or it was just a game, but that was just unbelievable, either way I was bounced out of the movie.
From there things just get more and more ridiculous and you realize the scale of which this is operating. We're talking potentially hundreds of people involved on this game / con depending on what you're believe at the time. In the end after the big reveal (or not) you start to mentally go back and think about things and realize just how ridiculous and unbelievable it all was, even for a movie. The amount of expense to even pull something like this off would have to be a few hundred thousand dollars, given materials, people, destruction, etc... And his brother sure didn't look to me like he could have covered the bill unless he had some big inheritance he was sitting on
I realize it's just a movie and it was entertaining but if at the end everything comes unraveled then you come away with the feeling that you were cheated, which is how I felt. Nobody has a crystal ball and can tell exactly what a person would do, regardless if you had all the upfront info they had. Nobody could do that amount of preparation either to account for what he might have done. Then there's the other aspect that nobody was seriously hurt or killed, which is very unrealistic given all that happened. The fact that he didn't get seriously hurt, or killed, or hurt or killed anyone else for that matter. And I don't buy that the phycological screening made it so they could play him like a pawn, nobody is that predictable, especially all the elements you can't control. It's in these aspects the movie unravels itself and falls apart.
Now what could have made this great, albeit maybe not as action packed, is if it wasn't so over the top with the near deaths, or if it wasn't so picture perfect. He knew he was being played all along regardless if it was a game or the stakes real, but if he would have outsmarted them at points, caught them off their guard, or hit dead ends it would have made for a much more realistic aspect and made it much more believable in the end. And especially the end, you can't predict where someone is going to jump off a building to their perceived death. That definitely shouldn't have played out that way. All in all a great idea and could have been pulled off much better. I really don't understand the high rating given all the holes and how unrealistic it was, but I guess you can't please everyone...