Superb, exhilirating at times

Rating: Null/10 (2 July 2003)

I don't buy the notion that The Game lacks genuine suspense because we do, all along, know it's all just a game. There is a natural flow to the film--if you go along with it, of course--that you have to be willing to get dragged into.
Once you get into that mode then you start to question it - is it just a game? Wait, it really is a game? What if it isn't a game?

I saw this in the theater and totally bought the premise. I let myself get into "The Game" and flow with its dynamics and get carried away with it. I think there is an underlying experience that one has to permit themselves rather than overanalyzing the content of the film at the time they're watching it. That may soundly overly simplistic and maybe if this film truly could be carried by its content alone we could approach it from any angle. Even it were "perfect", the nature of a movie like this is that there will always be a certain number of skeptics in the audience who will never let go of what it is versus where it wants to take you. I suppose if it were "perfect" though even the skeptics wouldn't be able to tell if it was real or just a lie. "The Usual Suspects" probably carries this off more believably and resolutely than "The Game" does. Still, as for me, my head was buzzing with the exhilaration after seeing it in the theater and I feel a bit charmed to have been able to experience "The Game" exactly as it was intended.
And I don't think the ending was really that bad at all. "The Game" had to end sometime and, well, how should it have ended?