One of the best performances of Michael Douglas

Rating: 7/10 (13 December 2019)

The beginning of the "The game" is very stong. We see Michael Douglas as the self righteous, grumpy, egocentric (in short nasty) rich businessman Nicholas van Orton. Nobody likes this guy and that becomes extremely clear when he celebrates his 48th birthday all on his own in his big house watching CNN and eating a hamburger.
A day later he gets a present from his brother. It is a ticket to a tailor made game. From then on the film tells the biblical story of Job, learning a rich man humility (apart from the fact that Job was rich but good from the beginning). The life of the control freak Van Orton is turned upside down and he seems to lose all his money. It is no coincidence that on the film poster his face disintegrates in the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Director Fincher tells the Job story in a spectacular way. The fact that a crime element or a crime possibility is always lurking on the background maintains the tension. As a viewer you forget that the story is highly unprobable. The organisation of the game seems capable of 100% predicting the reactions of Van Orton. It almost seems like the detective Dupin in the Edgar Allan Poe story "The murders in the Rue Morgue".