Original design yet marred by cavernous sized plot-holes

Rating: 5/10 (23 August 2008)

The basic premise of this movie is that the character played by Michael Douglas, an extremely wealthy, snobby, aristocratic, Los Angeles business man, has everything in the world he could ever desire. So it's his birthday, and his brother proposes, "What do you get your brother for his birthday when he already has everything he could possibly have in the entire world?" Well, it turns out, you buy him a real life action sequence set up as a game, that the receiver of the gift, played by Douglas, will never know when his game starts, and won't know when it will end until that exact moment.
For the next hour after the game begins we, as the viewers, are taken on a long journey filled with on-foot and car chases, shootouts, kidnapping, explosions, and other clichÃ© and typical action sequences.
Unfortunately, the action is so ridiculously over the top, that it can only be seen as a plot hole, bad writing even. Because the organizers of the game destroy cars, structures, entire houses, create explosions, fire assault automatic rifles off in the middle of downtown L.A. with no police repercussions for any of this. Suspending disbelief is just too impossible for this level of activity being unnoticed by local authorities. Not to mention many of the actors in the game impersonate federal, state and local law enforcement, and EMTs, all felonious acts.
Not to pigeonhole the movie into the 'all action no substance' genre that Hollywood is often accused of, the movie creates some horribly written dialog that is melodramatic, philosophical, and preachy. Not qualities that are fitting for an action-thriller movie, and serve to mostly get in the way of the explosions.
The cinematography, audio post production, and especially the acting, are all brilliant. The plot, and writing, and editing however are amateur at best and take away from the positives significantly.
Though the idea of this film is extremely original, the premise takes much creative license with reality and runs wild with an absurdly furious and unrealistic pace that would never go unnoticed by proper authorities. Everything that happens in the movie is part of 'the game' that the main character is experiencing. Factor in a $50 million budget then, and you have to wonder how his drug addicted, jobless, impecunious, and unkempt brother could have possibly afforded to pay for this birthday present. Throw in the fact that the company that runs that game would have to insure every aspect of the game that brings the total of the cost of one play-through of the game into the $100 million range. I just can't suspend disbelief that much for a movie that ignored its plot-holes to get straight to the explosions.