genuinely fantastic film with major flaw

Rating: 7/10 (24 February 2005)

Movie viewers usually enjoy it when a twist is thrown in at the end of the film. Perhaps Alfred Hitchcock deserves some credit for inventing the idea, and some might say it is the secret behind M. Night Shyamalan's success with movies such as the Sixth Sense. However, a twist at the end isn't necessarily always good. Sometimes it is little more than ridiculous. This is the case in The Game. The Game has all the hallmarks of a great movie. Suspense, action, dialogue, and great intensity as Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) tries to figure out what the hell is happening to him. Things get worse and worse for Van Orton (all the money is sucked out of his account and he is left for dead, and penniless in Mexico) and on his return to America he sets out to find who was behind the plot. It turns out that it was all a big hoax set up by Van Orton's brother to get him to enjoy life more. It is a clever idea, but one has to wonder if the ending was tacked on because the movie was getting too dark. The revelation at the end that everybody was acting, and the bullets shot at Van Orton in a few scenes were blanks (one has to wonder whether the script writers realised there was a major problem in that you actually see the bullets shattering glass, making holes in walls etc.) feels something like hearing a joke that builds up for 5 minutes and ends with a silly pun. Anyhow, this is a classic film, and who knows, some people may like the ending, but in my view the final explanation is so weak that it brings the rating down from a 9.5 to a 7.