totally implausible, but who cares

Rating: 8/10 (7 May 2006)

I was looking over my shoulder and racking my brain throughout this movie trying to figure out how the game always managed to stay one step ahead of Michael Douglas's character. Okay, so it asks you to accept some pretty wild premises and some fairly insane leaps of logic. Okay, so after you think about it, the suspense really has no sensible roots. The bottom line is that this movie is fun to watch.
There's really no way to so comprehensively map a person's every possible reaction that you could keep constantly abreast of him/her. I'm also not sure how sane the idea of plunging a taxi cab into water is, whether there's a supposed diver on the scene or not. And shipping the guy to Mexico in a box? Come on. I mean, at some point, this guy is going to come up with something the game-writers can't foresee. So the game itself, I just don't believe could work.
But the movie does. The viewer is brought into the game at the same speed as Nick Van Orton (Douglas), so the mystery works on two levels. It raises a number of questions, and although it doesn't satisfactorily answer them all (or even most of them), it still sends chills up your spine. What would you do if they seized your bank accounts, stole your identity, chased you, drugged you, and shipped you a thousand miles away in a coffin-sized box? It's creepy to think about it, even with your brain constantly untangling the overbearing contrivance that put it on screen in the first place.
The truth is that I was totally skeptical of the game all the way through and even after I saw the movie, but I just don't care. I liked watching it. I was entertained. And isn't that what the movies are all about?