The Game

Rating: 4/10 (3 May 2017)

David Fincher is a highly celebrated modern director responsible for a few modern-day classics, as well as the 1997 film, The Game. Fincher is one that I have struggled with. Some of his films make it easy to see their greatness, while others seem overrated, to me. The Game starring Michael Douglas as a rich investment banker looking for a break from his life shows interest in a mysterious game his brother informs him about. A mystery folded within an exercise in personal revelation, The Game never quite delivers on either message it promises.
Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is a wealthy investment banker living in San Fransisco who enjoys his time alone more than he enjoys crowding his life with an abundance of people. He has even become rather estranged from his brother Conrad (Sean Penn). When Conrad tells his brother about an unusual game he can play, then gives him a gift certificate to partake in the game for a birthday present, Nicholas is intrigued. Nicholas is constantly haunted by memories of his father's suicide, and these flashbacks have intensified the closer it gets to Nicholas's 48th birthday, as that was the year his father ended his life. Seeking a refuge from his life and the constant flashbacks, Nicholas begins to investigate taking part in the game. Almost immediately after his entry to the game, Nicholas endures trauma and troubles in every aspect of his life. His professional life, his personal life, and even his safety have all become uncertain as the lines between reality and the game become too vague to discern.
The Game presented a unique premise but perhaps was a bit too far- fetched. The elaborate measures one endures while taking part in the game, up to and including being abandoned for dead in Mexico yet unable to trace, beg for more than a suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience member. The film also has a serious pacing problem. Tightening up the narrative and reducing the run time by about 30 minutes would have been a great benefit to the audience. The film really starts to slog about just after the halfway point, becoming easy for one to lose both interest and intrigue. I read a reading of the film that presents it as a modern-day retelling of A Christmas Carol. I have difficulties with this reading because there is not enough establishment of Douglas's character as a bad person before he starts playing the game. Scrooge, in A Christmas Carol, is quite obviously a curmudgeonly fellow, obsessed with profits and his own gain. Douglas's Nicholas, however, comes off as a man successful in his field who appears broken by the looming memories of his father's death. Without a clear identity of Douglas as a man we are supposed to dislike due to his business practices, it's difficult to watch his livelihood taken away from him due to a sick game. I came off disliking the seemingly heroic Conrad than I ever disliked Nicholas. The Game falters on its premise and suffers from too little establishment of what is apparently supposed to be an unlikeable character, which is a unique problem in a film in which pacing is such a slog.