"The Game" - a first draft

Rating: 5/10 (17 December 2001)

I don't know where Cameron Crowe found the nerve to put in the credits "Written for the screen and directed by Cameron Crowe" - I mean, ALL he did was translating straight from Spanish the original ! And the truth is, some rewriting - maybe even a lot - or at least a slightly more adventurous adaptation might have served the movie well. True, the whole crippled act by Tom Cruise is quite surprisingly convincing and probably better than in the original, but it doesn't make up for the (unchanged) ridiculous ending - not as convoluted as it's cracked up to be, it just looks like a cheap trick from a scriptwriter who couldn't decide how to tie up the story's loose ends. (By the way, the love story, supposedly central here, is not well served by a total lack of "onscreen chemistry" between the Cruizes.)	So if you want to see a really witty script toss around "LoveHateDreamsLifeWorkPlayFriendshipSex", you're better off with David Fincher's The Game which, when you think about it, has a lot in common with this movie - except that it opposes, to a relatively bland story with a far-fetched, sci-fi-like ending, a mind-blowing story with a remarkably sober ending. That's what a good script surgeon working on this case might have reconstructed.