The Game is a mysterious and suspenseful thriller. Spoiler!

Rating: Null/10 (20 June 2011)

The Game is a suspenseful mystery about a wealthy banker, Nicholas Van Orton played my Michael Douglas, who is a loner in life. The movie stems around Nicholas' 48th birthday. Nicholas watched his father comment suicide by jumping off of his home's rooftop at the age of 48. Nicholas is deeply troubled by this throughout his life and even more on his birthday. The audience is made aware of this because of several flashback scenes in which Nicholas relives seeing his father commit suicide. Nicholas has a younger brother named Conrad who is played by Sean Penn. Conrad has had several addictions in his life and has had a distant relationship with his brother. Conrad visits Nicholas to give him a birthday gift. He gives him a certificate to Consumer Recreation Services which Conrad tells him is a company that creates a real life game to play and urges Nicholas to try it. Nicholas' curiosity is peaked and he signs up for the game. He does a day's worth of testing and then is told that CRS couldn't make a game for him. Shortly after that he finds himself in a real life game in which he is the key player. The game is played out and pushes Nicholas to his limits physically, mentally, and emotionally. As he plays the game he keeps meeting up with Christine played by Deborah Kara Unger. Christine tells Nicholas that she knows information about the game and is valuable to him and that he needs to keep her around. Nicholas is put in several life and death situations throughout the game. He also begins to trust no one when he learns that the game was all about CRS's owner, Jim Feingold played by James Rebhorn, taking away everything that Nicholas has worked for. He believes that Jim has emptied all of his accounts and taken everything that he has worked for.
Finally Nicholas has been pushed to his limit and goes to the CRS office in hopes to find out who is behind the whole game. When he goes to the office he finds many familiar faces that have all played different roles in this game. He takes Christine hostage and they end up on the roof top. Christine tries to calm Nicholas down and explain what is going on but he is on the verge of a breakdown. Since he took her hostage he believes that everyone is coming to get him and that's all he can concentrate on. When the door opens to the rooftop, Nicholas fires before seeing who's there. It turns out that some of the key players to the game are there with Conrad. Nicholas had shot and killed Conrad as he stood there with a bottle of champagne. The other players in the game can't believe what happened. The game had gone too far. Nicholas is so distraught that he jumps off of the building believing that his fate is the same as his father's at this point. He falls several stories and then through a glass rooftop where he surprisingly lands on a giant airbag. This was the final stage of the game. All of his family and friends are there expecting his arrival. His brother is also there. His staged death was also part of the game.
His brother got him the game for his birthday in hopes of shining some light on his life and showing him that he can enjoy life and not be held back by the fact he watched his father commit suicide. Nicholas seems very thankful for the game his brother got him. This movie reminded me of the movie Crash with the constant mystery and then satisfaction of seeing how all of the characters were intertwined among one another. There were several scenes that were very dark in the movie. The low lighting helped both the mood of the scenes and the suspense of not knowing if there was more to come in a particular scene. The Game continued to be mysterious and suspenseful throughout the movie right up until the end. I thought the game was over when Nicholas shot Conrad. Then I thought it was over when he jumped off of the roof. In reality the game didn't end until Nicholas arrived at his birthday party.