a thriller with enough paranoia and gusto to be one of the better films of 97

Rating: 9/10 (21 April 2006)

The Game is basically an elaborate hoax, but unlike at least several others I've seen over the past several years, director David Fincher gets something really right about this one. The fact is the plot is so convoluted at times, so pumped with the kind of paranoia and surrealism to give Hitchcock the willies, that it almost works to annoy the viewer with the amount of manipulation it puts across. But, as it turns out, it is more about being manipulated than it is about, well, to put it this way, the audience isn't necessarily cheated as in a lessor picture. Adding to the intelligence level of the audience (or, for some, lack thereof) is superlative craftsmanship on the part of Fincher, who has carved out for him with his roster of films from the 90's quite a nook of edge-of-your-seat thrills that, at the least, isn't boring.
Michael Douglas is really excellent here as well, on par with some of his best work of the past decade and a half. At first his performance seems rather subdued, like a distilled version of those businessmen he plays in almost every other movie he's in. Again, part of the manipulation not just on the audience, but tenfold on the lead character. Nicholas is given a birthday present from his brother (Sean Penn), and it turns out to be 'the game', where anything can happen, and rather relentlessly at that. Soon Nicholas, cold and sort of detached from those around him, becomes super-duper paranoid and on his toes as the CRS (Consumer Recreational Services, ho-ho) goes to work on him. Pretty soon he has no money, no home, almost no life. Or is it? It's not too inappropriate to have the opening image over the credits of jigsaw puzzles is not far from what the film is itself, just one huge set laid out on the carpet.
If there could be anything that started to bug me as the film started to near its climax, it would be that, well, it's a reminder of both how much I like and dislike getting mind-f***ed by a movie, particularly a brilliantly shot-one like this. And the more I think about it, however, it may possibly lack something that Fincher's follow-up, Fight Club (possibly his best film to date), had, which was a connection of character to some kind of statement about something. Has the hoax that ends up showing itself as amounted to something in the way that it should've, or could've? The cat-and-mouse factor of the script, direction and acting, and the whole atmosphere is probably on par with Fincher's other work, but is there a connection with how Nicholas was and how he does become, or is it all meant for the gimmick?
Still, with this observation, if not quite a criticism, I still recognize this film as being a mile ahead of other films that have come in its wake. Too often do I see a film where a lead character- or characters- get the run-around (so to speak) just for the sake of the script. This time in the Game, the director- by way of the almost TOO convincing performances (that scene between Douglas and Penn in the car & stairs at night had me talking to the screen for the right and wrong reasons)- doesn't insult the audience's expectations. Bottom line, go in with a suspension of disbelief, and it's one of the better elaborate hoaxes put on film in the 90's.