The Game (film)

The Game is a 1997 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 film was well received by critics in spite of middling box-office returns compared to the success of Fincher's previous film, Seven.

The Game was #44 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

Plot

Nicholas Van Orton (Douglas) is a successful, extremely wealthy businessman, but his success has come at the cost of his personal life. He is estranged from his ex-wife.

On Nicholas' 48^th birthday, his younger, rebellious, brother Conrad (Penn) presents him with an unusual gift -- a game offered by a company called Consumer Recreation Services -- promising that it will change Nicholas' life. (The idea of Consumer Recreation Services seems to be lifted directly from the G. K. Chesterton story "The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown"). The nature of The Game is unclear at first, but it appears to be a sort of live action role-playing game that integrates directly into the player's real life.

After taking a lengthy psychological test and a physical exam, Nicholas is informed that CRS has rejected "his application" for The Game. However, he soon discovers the Game has not only begun, but it begins by focusing on a key traumatic moment of Nicholas's life when, as a child, he witnessed his father committing suicide by leaping off the roof of their family home, the same home Nicholas lives in now, on his 48th birthday, the same one Nicholas is now "celebrating."

Evidence mounts that The Game is actually an elaborate and dangerous scheme. Each time Nicholas thinks he has uncovered the truth, he finds a new layer of complexity to it. The game escalates into a no-holds-barred assault on everything Nicholas values, and his carefully ordered life seems to be disintegrating around him as The Game takes control.

He encounters an employee of Consumer Recreation Services, a waitress who calls herself Christine (Unger), who at first assists him in escaping from the clutches of the increasingly violent CRS operatives, but after a series of narrow escapes and repeated attempts on his life, Nicholas realizes he has been drugged by Christine. He regains consciousness in a burial crypt in Southern Mexico in a symbolic premature burial, all the while knowing that the hundreds of millions of dollars in his and his company's bank accounts have been drained by Christine and her associates. The Game is now revealed to be an elaborate scam to relieve the power elite of their property and, if necessary, of their lives.

Nicholas returns from Mexico to San Francisco by hitchhiking and begging rides, and as he believes that he has been alienated from his friends and his trusted lawyer, Nicholas comes to a realization about his life. He meets with and makes peace with his ex-wife, who has happily remarried and is about to give birth to her second child. But he becomes increasingly desperate and retrieves a hidden handgun from his ransacked home. He locates a Game employee and threatens him. With the employee's security clearance, he heads directly into the offices of The Game and takes Christine hostage.

Security arrives and opens fire. Several of the staff are hit, falling over. Christine and Nicholas escape to the roof of the company's skyscraper, and he demands answers. Christine appears surprised by the gun, anxiously telling Nicholas that CRS had provided an automatic for him to use, yet he is carrying a revolver. She says that The Game's company thought it had replaced any real firearms Nicholas could access with unloaded fakes. She insists that the Game is just a hoax, and that his friends and family are waiting on the other side of the steel door, ready to celebrate his birthday. As the steel door opens, surprising the frightened and almost hysterical Nicholas, he fires without looking, only to reveal that he has shot his brother, who was holding a bottle of champagne and dressed in a tuxedo to celebrate Nicholas' birthday, and the successful conclusion of The Game. Several of the staff who have been shot appear again, unharmed.

Stricken with remorse and guilt (and exhaustion), Nicholas walks to the edge of the skyscraper's roof and steps off. He crashes through the glass ceiling of the ballroom. However, he lands safely on an airbag placed there for just that reason, and a doctor and rescue workers quickly restrain him and check him over, brushing bits of breakaway glass from his face and eyes. Then he finds his family and friends awaiting his scheduled arrival, and The Game is revealed to have just been a complex game after all. None of his accounts have been drained, the gun was indeed reloaded with blanks, and his brother is very much alive. As they embrace, Conrad confesses that he arranged the extremely expensive Game as a way to shake his brother back to reality and help him to learn to enjoy life again.

As the party is in full swing, Nicholas meets several of the guests who were operatives in the Game. When he asks about Christine, Conrad tells him that she is outside about to depart in a cab. Nicholas runs outside and talks to her about her part in the Game. She appears attracted to him, and invites him to have coffee with her at the airport before she flies to Australia for her next assignment in the Game. Nicholas's Game appears to finally be over (but he cautiously looks around, as he isn't sure).

Cast

• Michael Douglas as Nicholas Van Orton
• Sean Penn as Conrad Van Orton
• Deborah Kara Unger as Christine
• James Rebhorn as Jim Feingold
• Peter Donat as Samuel Sutherland
• Carroll Baker as Ilsa
• Anna Katerina as Elizabeth (as Anna Katarina)
• Armin Mueller-Stahl as Anson Baer
• Charles Martinet as Nicholas' Father
• Scott Hunter McGuire as Young Nicholas
• Florentine Mocanu as Nicholas' Mother
• Elizabeth Dennehy as Maria
• Caroline Barclay as Maggie
• Daniel Schorr as Himself
• John Aprea as Power Executive

Production

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."He said in an interview that his movie 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."

For the scene where Nicholas Van Orton's taxi drives into the San Francisco Bay, the close-up with Douglas was filmed on a soundstage that contained a large tank of water. The actor was in a small compartment that was designed to resemble the backseat of a taxi with three cameras capturing the action.

Locations

The movie was filmed primarily in San Francisco, the final scenes were filmed in what is now the Palace Hotel on 2 New Montgomery St. The use of San Francisco as the primary locale was clearly a deliberate choice by Fincher; the city was of great significance in Michael Douglas' own career—he rose to fame as the co-star (with Karl Malden) of the popular 1970s police series The Streets of San Francisco, and also starred in the San Francisco-based hit thriller Basic Instinct.

Nicholas's mansion was actually the historic Filoli Mansion, 25 miles south of San Francisco in Woodside, California. The plain gravel forecourt of the mansion was made to look more like a wrap-around driveway by the addition of the fountain, which was constructed of lightweight foam. The interior shots of the kitchen were made in the original time-worn kitchen, which is displayed on tours but no longer used. The kitchen was in a failing state of repair, so very dim lighting was used in the kitchen scenes to hide this. The scenes in which the walls were defaced with graffiti was done by tacking up lightweight graffiti-painted foamcore boards over the wood paneling.

Response

The Game opened to fairly positive reviews, and grossed $48 million domestically and $61 million overseas. As of Feb 2009, it ranks 79% 'Fresh' at Rotten Tomatoes, with 29 counted reviews. On Metacritic, the movie has a score of 61(generally favourable reviews) out of 100. Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, praising the dialogue and casting of Michael Douglas. In his review for the Boston Globe, Jay Carr wrote, "The Game doesn't pretend to be more than a deftly fabricated construct, but it will keep you guessing and then outguess you and leave you feeling dazzled as opposed to dazed." Janet Maslin wrote in her New York Times review, "Mr. Fincher, like Michael Douglas in the film's leading role, does show real finesse in playing to the paranoia of these times." The San Francisco Chronicle's 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."