The Game (film)

The Game

Promotional poster
Directed by David Fincher
Produced by Cean Chaffin
Steve Golin
Written by John Brancato
Michael Ferris
Uncredited:
Andrew Kevin Walker
Starring Michael Douglas
Sean Penn
Deborah Kara Unger
James Rebhorn
Peter Donat
Armin Mueller-Stahl
Music by Howard Shore
Cinematography Harris Savides
Editing by James Haygood
Distributed by United States:
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
Scandinavia:
Buena Vista International
Release date(s) September 12, 1997
Running time 135 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget Estimated:
$50,000,000
Gross revenue Worldwide:
$109,423,648

The Game is a 1997 Neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by David Fincher, starring Michael Douglas, featuring Sean Penn, and produced by Polygram. It tells the story of an investment banker who is given a mysterious gift: participation in a game that integrates in strange ways with his life. As the lines between the banker's real life and the game become more uncertain, there are hints of a large conspiracy.

The Game was well received by critics, though had middling box-office returns compared to the success of Fincher's previous film, Seven. The film was ranked #44 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

Contents

Plot

Nicholas Van Orton (Douglas) is a successful, extremely wealthy investment banker, but his success has come at the cost of his personal life. He is estranged from both his ex-wife and his only brother, and he remains haunted by seeing his father commit suicide on his 48th birthday by jumping off the roof of the family's home. On his own 48th birthday, Conrad (Penn), Nicholas' younger rebellious brother, calls his secretary under the name Seymour Butts. When Nicholas hears this he cancels his other appointments and asks his secretary to make reservation in a restaurant under his name. At the restaurant, Conrad presents Nicholas with an unusual gift — a voucher for a "game" offered by a company called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS) — promising that it will change Nicholas' life. He has doubts about calling CRS but after a business meeting with a person who enjoyed the Game, he goes to the organization's office to apply.

Nicholas undertakes a lengthy psychological test and a physical exam by CRS, but is later informed that his application is rejected. However, some time later, Nicholas finds the Game is real, which starts to put his business, reputation, finances, and safety at risk. He encounters a waitress, Christine (Unger), who appears to have been caught up in the Game and also comes under risk, and they develop a budding relationship. When Nicholas contacts the police to investigate CRS, they find the offices abandoned. Conrad appears to Nicholas and apologizes for the Game as he himself has come under attack. With no other contact to turn to, Nicholas finds Christine's home, but soon discovers she is a CRS employee and her apartment has simply been staged to look like a real apartment. Christine tells Nicholas they're being watched, which enrages Nicholas. He attacks a camera and CRS employees suddenly begin to swarm the house and shoot it up. Nicholas and Christine are forced to flee. Nicholas realizes that CRS has drained his accounts and he is now broke. Just as he begins to trust Christine, he realizes she has drugged him and he falls unconscious.

Nicholas wakes up to find himself in a run-down cemetery in Mexico, and is forced to sell his golden watch he got from his parents to return to the United States. On his return, he retrieves cash and a gun from his now-trashed home, and seeks the aid of his estranged wife. While talking with her, he discovers, through a drug ad on television, one of the identities of another CRS employee, an actor, that led his physiological test. He soon forces the actor to take him to CRS, where he finds and takes Christine hostage until he learns the truth. Christine realizes that Nicholas' gun is not a prop, as CRS was unaware of its presence. Nicholas takes Christine to the roof, barring access from below, but soon a commotion starts up in a nearby vent. Christine frantically tells Nicholas that the Game is a hoax, and that his family and friends are waiting on the other side of the vent, but he refuses to believe her. The door bursts open and Nicholas ends up shooting down his brother. Distraught, he leaps off the roof.

Nicholas' life passes before his eyes as he falls. He smashes through a glass roof and lands on an inflated mat. Several people carefully remove him, clarifying he should keep his eyes closed because the break-away glass might scratch them. Nicholas finds he is in a ballroom full of his friends and family; it had been a game all along. Conrad is alive and well; Nicholas splits the bill for the game with him. When he sees Christine has disappeared, he follows her outside where she is getting ready to depart to the next CRS Game. He asks her for dinner, the next time she'll be around. She offers to enjoy a private coffee with her now before her plane leaves. Nicholas looks back at his birthday party and into the darkness ahead. The screen fades to black.

Cast

Production

The Game began as a spec screenplay, written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris in 1991.[1] It was sold that year to MGM, who put the project in turnaround, where it was picked up by Propaganda Films. Director Jonathan Mostow was originally attached to the project with Kyle MacLachlan and Bridget Fonda cast in the lead roles. Principal photography was to start in February 1993 but in early 1992, the project was moved to PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. Mostow was no longer the director of the film but instead became an executive producer.[1] Producer Steve Golin bought the script from MGM and gave it to David Fincher in the hopes that he would direct.[2] Fincher liked the various plot twists but brought in Andrew Kevin Walker, who had worked with him on Seven, to make the character of Nicholas more cynical in nature. Fincher and Walker spent six weeks changing the tone and trying to make the story work.[2] According to David Fincher, there were three primary influences on The Game. Michael Douglas' character was a "fashionable, good-looking Scrooge, lured into a Mission: Impossible situation with a steroid shot in the thigh from The Sting".[3] He said in an interview that his film differs from others of that kind because "movies usually make a pact with the audience that says: we're going to play it straight. What we show you is going to add up. But we don't do that. In that respect, it's about movies and how movies dole out information".[4] Furthermore, Fincher has said that the film is about "loss of control. The purpose of The Game is to take your greatest fear, put it this close to your face and say 'There, you're still alive. It's all right.'"[1] More revisions were made to the script, including removing a scene where Nicholas kills Christine and then commits suicide because Fincher felt that it did not make sense.[5] In 1996, Larry Gross and Walker were brought in to make further revisions to the script.[6]

Fincher intended to make The Game before Seven but when Brad Pitt became available that project took priority.[2] The success of Seven helped the producers of The Game get the larger budget that they wanted. Then, they approached Michael Douglas to star in the film. He was hesitant at first because of concerns that Polygram was not a big enough company to distribute the film. However, once on board, Douglas' presence helped get the film into production.[2] At the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, Polygram announced that Jodie Foster would be starring in the film with Douglas.[5] However, Fincher was uncomfortable with putting a movie star of her stature in a supporting part. After talking to her, he considered rewriting the character of Conrad as Nicholas' daughter so that Foster could play that role. However, the actress had a scheduling conflict with the Robert Zemeckis film Contact and could not appear in The Game. Once she left, the role of Conrad was offered to Jeff Bridges but he declined and Sean Penn was cast instead.[5] Deborah Kara Unger's auditioned for the role of Christine with test reel consisting of a two-minute sex scene from David Cronenberg's Crash. Douglas thought it was a joke but when he and Fincher met her in person, they were impressed by her acting.[7]

Principal photography began on location in San Francisco, despite studio pressure to shoot in Los Angeles which was cheaper.[6] Fincher also considered shooting the film in Chicago and Seattle, but the former had no mansions that were close by and the latter did not have an adequate financial district. The script had been written with San Francisco in mind and he liked the financial district's "old money, Wall Street vibe".[6] However, that area of the city was very busy and hard to move around in. The production shot on weekends in order to have more control. Fincher utilized old stone buildings, small streets and the city's hills to represent the class system pictorially. To convey the old money world, he set many scenes in restaurants with hardwood paneling and red leather. Some of the locations used in the film included Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, and the historic Filoli Mansion, 25 miles south of San Francisco in Woodside, California, which stood in for the Van Orton mansion.[6]

For the visual look of Nicholas' wealthy lifestyle, Fincher and the film's cinematographer Harris Savides wanted a "rich and supple" feel and took references from films like The Godfather which featured visually appealing locations with ominous intentions lurking under the surface.[8] According to Fincher, once Nicholas' left his protective world, he and Savides would let fluorescents, neon signs and other lights in the background be overexposed to let "things get a bit wilder out in the real world".[8] For The Game, Fincher employed a Technicolor printing process known as ENR which lent a smoother look to the night sequences. The challenge for him was how much deception could the audience take and "will they go for 45 minutes of red herrings?"[9] To this end, he tried to stage scenes as simply as possible and use a single camera because "with multiple cameras, you run the risk of boring people with coverage".[9]

The scene where Nicholas' taxi drives into the San Francisco Bay was shot near the Embarcadero with the close-up of Douglas trapped in the back seat filmed on a soundstage at Sony Pictures studio in a large tank of water.[10] The actor was in a small compartment that was designed to resemble the backseat of a taxi with three cameras capturing the action.[11] Principal photography lasted 100 days with a lot of shooting done at night utilizing numerous locations.[12]

Reception

The Game was released on September 12, 1997, in 2,403 theaters, grossing $14.3 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $48.3 million in North America and $61.1 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $109.4 million.[13]

The Game opened to fairly positive reviews with a 79% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes and 61 metascore at Metacritic. Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, praising Douglas as "the right actor for the role. He can play smart, he can play cold, and he can play angry. He is also subtle enough that he never arrives at an emotional plateau before the film does, and never overplays the process of his inner change".[14] In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Mr. Fincher, like Michael Douglas in the film's leading role, does show real finesse in playing to the paranoia of these times".[15] Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "Fincher's style is so handsomely oppressive, and Douglas' befuddlement is so cagey, that for a while the film recalls smarter excursions into heroic paranoia (The Parallax View, Total Recall)".[16] In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, "It’s formulaic, yet edgy. It’s predictable, yet full of surprises. How far you get through this tall tale of a thriller before you give up and howl is a matter of personal taste. But there’s much pleasure in Fincher’s intricate color schemes, his rich sense of decor, his ability to sustain suspense over long periods of time and his sense of humor".[17] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B+" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Emotionally, there's not much at stake in The Game — can Nicholas Van Orton be saved?! — but Douglas is the perfect actor to occupy the center of a crazed Rube Goldberg thriller. The movie has the wit to be playful about its own manipulations, even as it exploits them for maximum pulp impact".[18] In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle wrote, "At times The Game is frustrating to watch, but that's just a measure of how well Fincher succeeds in putting us in his hero's shoes".[19] However, Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Travers felt that "Fincher's effort to cover up the plot holes is all the more noticeable for being strained ... The Game has a sunny, redemptive side that ill suits Fincher and ill serves audiences that share his former affinity for loose ends hauntingly left untied".[20]

The film was #44 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.[21]

Bluffmaster!, a bollywood movie, borrows elements from the movie, such as the last scene.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Swallow 2003, p. 91.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Swallow 2003, p. 92.
  3. ↑ Arnold, Gary (September 14, 1997). "Director Fincher Learns More About Game of Making Movies". Washington Times. 
  4. ↑ Gilbey, Ryan (October 10, 1997). "Precocious Producer who gets a thrill from tripping people up". The Independent. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Swallow 2003, p. 93.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Swallow 2003, p. 94.
  7. ↑ Hochman, David (October 3, 1997). "Under Strikes". Entertainment Weekly. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,289716,00.html. Retrieved September 23, 2009. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Swallow 2003, p. 102.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Swallow 2003, p. 103.
  10. ↑ Swallow 2003, p. 95.
  11. ↑ Farber, Stephen (August 31, 1997). "A Meeting of Tough Minds in Hollywood". The New York Times. 
  12. ↑ Swallow 2003, p. 96.
  13. ↑ "The Game". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=game.htm. Retrieved August 20, 2009. 
  14. ↑ Ebert, Roger (September 19, 1997). "The Game". Chicago Sun-Times. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970919/REVIEWS/709190303/1023. Retrieved August 20, 2009. 
  15. ↑ Maslin, Janet (September 12, 1997). "Terrifying Tricks That Make a Big Man Little". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/library/film/game-film-review.html. Retrieved August 20, 2009. 
  16. ↑ Corliss, Richard (September 22, 1997). "These Jokers are Wild". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,987037,00.html. Retrieved August 20, 2009. 
  17. ↑ Howe, Desson (September 12, 1997). "The Game: Absurdly Inspired". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/review97/gamehowe.htm. Retrieved August 20, 2009. 
  18. ↑ Gleiberman, Owen (September 12, 1997). "The Game". Entertainment Weekly. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,289361,00.html. Retrieved August 20, 2009. 
  19. ↑ LaSalle, Mick (September 12, 1997). "The Game Is Up". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1997/09/12/DD9679.DTL. Retrieved August 20, 2009. 
  20. ↑ Travers, Peter (February 10, 1998). "The Game". Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/5948705/review/5948706/the_game. Retrieved August 20, 2009. 
  21. ↑ "100 Scariest Movie Moments". Bravo. http://web.archive.org/web/20071030070540/http://www.bravotv.com/The_100_Scariest_Movie_Moments/index.shtml. Retrieved August 20, 2009. 

References

External links

Films directed by David Fincher
1990s
Alien 3 (1992) • Seven (1995) • The Game (1997) • Fight Club (1999)
2000s
Panic Room (2002) • Zodiac (2007) • The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
2010s
The Social Network (2010) • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)