Many of us sometimes get the feeling that our lives are spinning out of control. It’s a queasy, nasty feeling — and it’s also the nightmare exploited by the toney new thriller “The Game.”
At the center of this upscale shocker about a wealthy businessman who finds his life running off the rails is an overwhelming fear. What if the world isn’t what it seems? What if we suddenly lost everything? What if our everyday routines concealed a malicious secret design, a conspiracy to mess up our minds and perhaps destroy us?
Directed by David Fincher, the high-style horror expert of “Seven” and “Alien 3,” this elaborate and twisty puzzle-thriller focuses on a wealthy San Francisco investment banker named Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas), whose hell-raising brother Conrad (Sean Penn) — makes him a 48th birthday present of a free “game” from an organization called Consumer Recreation Services.
What is the “game?” When does it start? Grinning black sheep Conrad — who’s as loose and irreverent as Nicholas is buttoned-down and tense — won’t say, beyond mentioning that he’s played the game himself, in London. And that it was a “life-changing experience.”
But soon Nicholas — a loner absorbed with ruthless deal-making and the bottom line, a man of icy instincts and no apparent compassion (in fact, a perfect Michael Douglas anti-hero role) — finds himself trapped in a nightmare, where all bets are off and all tables turned.
Beginning with mild insults — including waitresses spilling drinks on him, Consumer Recreation Services’ glib representative (James Rebhorn) subjecting him to a battery of tests and then telling him he’s flunked — Nicholas finds himself in a crucible of paranoia. He’s chased, endangered and double-crossed, stripped of every security. Soon, not just Nicholas’ peace of mind but his very life seems at stake. His money disappears; he finds himself faced with horrific scandals. Armed commandos blast away at him. His house is vandalized, and he’s drugged, beaten and left for dead. And when Nicholas tries to check on the people who apparently started this, at Consumer Recreation Services, he finds the offices empty.
But is all this part of the game? Or has the game gone out of control? Or is Nicholas Van Orton simply crazy? Has he slipped over the moorings, just like his father who, on the same birthday (48), killed himself by jumping off a roof?
Or are the moviemakers just playing with our heads?
A truly first-rate puzzle-thriller would have kept us off-base throughout, spinning dizzily among all the possibilities. But even though “The Game” is rippingly paced and gorgeously produced — and though director Fincher and his artist-technicians (cinematographer Harris Savides and designer Jeffrey Beecroft) perform visual prodigies throughout — it doesn’t hit that high level of imagination and creativity.
The movie is clever but not ingenious, smart but not mesmerizing. Fincher gets a dazzling surface virtuosity, but he can’t pull us completely into his nightmare. “The Game” is a big, scary, beautiful but mostly empty Hollywood objet d’art. And the ending left me feeling short-changed — not only because it’s so implausible but also because there seemed scant justification for everything the movie tries to put us through.
Unlike another recent big-budget paranoid thriller, “The Conspiracy Theory,” “The Game” doesn’t make enough human or emotional contact (or intellectual contact). Part of the problem revolves around Nicholas himself, who is so nasty we may relish his discomfort. (Do we really like or identify with him? Or are we just trapped in the next roller coaster seat?)
Douglas is good. So are Penn, Rebhorn, Deborah Kara Unger (who may be heroine or shill) and Armin Mueller-Stahl, as an integral employee whom Nicholas fires. And, superficially this is his specialty: another ultra-slick, edgy, flawed modern American male. Douglas has played both sides of Nicholas before: the sleek corporate villain (in “Wall Street”) and the business type faced with catastrophe (in “Fatal Attraction,” “Falling Down” and “Disclosure”). But, with his sharkish self-regard and brittle intensity, he’s almost better as a bad guy. He can nail down those sleek, soulless heavies as well as his father, Kirk Douglas, did in his old film noir days.
Though Douglas was probably attracted by “The Game’s” theme of undermining complacency, he can’t convince us that Nicholas is being changed much, by even his most horrific experiences (mostly because it’s not there in the script). In a key speech, a couple of ex-players explain that the game’s point lies in the Gospel of John (“Once I was blind, but now I see”). But are his eyes really being opened? Though Nicholas is battered and bloodied, his character shifts aren’t drawn sharply enough.
There’s a subtext in “The Game” which suggests that Conrad’s problems — and Nicholas’ fall — are analogues for drug use, that the game is really a symbol for addiction (which can really take over your life and make you paranoid). That hint is underscored by the movie’s frequent use of Jefferson Airplane’s legendary ’60s drug anthem “White Rabbit.”
But “The Game” doesn’t dwell on this interesting undercurrent. It’s constructed instead out of a series of dark fantasies that might afflict anyone in easy circumstances. It’s all a fake. Everyone will turn on you. In the movie’s most memorable frisson, newscaster Daniel Schorr, in the middle of a cable TV financial report, suddenly seems to join the conspiracy against Nicholas.
At 34, David Fincher has established himself as a genuinely imaginative and high-style thriller director, both in “Seven” (which was a huge hit) and “Alien 3” (which wasn’t). “The Game” shouldn’t alter his reputation. Whatever goes wrong with the movie seems more the fault of the script — or perhaps the way Fincher steered the rewrites. Fincher has a penchant for gloomy, murky, visions of corruption and decay — and it’s remarkable how malignant and comfortless a view he gets of San Francisco’s wealthier environs. The movie dazzles us visually even as it fails us emotionally. It gets our motor running and then cuts off the gas. It intrigues and disappoints us. Are those the rules of the game?
”THE GAME”
(star) (star) 1/2
Directed by David Fincher; written by John Brancato, Michael Ferris; photographed by Harris Savides; edited by James Haygood; production designed by Jeffrey Beecroft; music by Howard Shore; produced by Steve Golin, Cean Chaffin. A Polygram Films release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:08. MPAA rating: R. Language, sensuality, nudity, violence.
THE CAST
Nicholas Van Orton ………… Michael Douglas
Conrad Van Orton ………….. Sean Penn
Christine ………………… Deborah Kara Unger
Jim Feingold ……………… James Rebhorn
Ilsa …………………….. Carroll Baker
Anson Baer ……………….. Armin Mueller-Stahl
Sam Sutherland ……………. Peter Donat
