Eleven years after it came out, I’ve finally caught up with David Fincher’s film The Game. And it was worth the wait – an intriguing and, at times, compulsively watchable thriller in which nothing can be taken for granted.
Michael Douglas plays Nicholas van Orton, a fabulously wealthy financier who has reached the same age (48) as his father, who committed suicide. Nick is a control freak with an empty emotional life, although he maintains a relationship of sorts with his brother Conrad (Sean Penn) and his ex-wife. When Conrad offers him, as a birthday gift, the chance to participate in a mysterious game, Nick reluctantly succumbs to temptation and pays a visit to the people who run the game, an outfit known as Consumer Recreation Services. They put him through a series of tests so intensive that one is reminded of the chillier scenes of The Parallax View. Nick is told that he has not been accepted for participation in the game – but nevertheless his life soon starts to move in very mysterious ways.
Before long, bad stuff starts to happen to him and his life and fortune are put in jeopardy. All of a sudden, it’s not clear whether he can trust even those closest to him. Conrad? His lawyer? His ex-wife? Or maybe the waitress who was hired by CRS to throw drinks over him in a restaurant?
I can well understand why this film has become something of a cult. One or two commentators have suggested that the ending is anti-climactic, but I think it works pretty well.
Games appeal to me, and they crop up in crime fiction in a wide variety of guises. For instance, I wonder whether anyone else remembers that excellent thriller The Ludi Victor by James Leigh. The book won the CWA’s John Creasey Memorial Award for best first crime novel of 1981. The winner of the same award the year before was Liza Cody, the winner the year after was Andrew Taylor. Both have gone on to great things. But James Leigh seems to have faded out of view. Baffling.
Thursday 19 June 2008
The Game
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5 comments:
Excellent post Martin
- David Fincher's THE GAME is one of my favourite movies especially as it probes one of my passions - the nature of reality. It falls into the subgenre of movies, many inspired by Philip K. Dick's [PKD] work.
When I saw it the first time - I was just blown-away, and the use of Grace Slick / Jefferson Airplane's 'WHITE RABBIT' perfect.
Other such reality-bending movies that I have enjoyed are -
BLADE RUNNER [PKD]
IMPOSTER [PKD]
THE TRUMAN SHOW [uncredited PKD]
PAYCHECK [PKD]
TOTAL RECALL [PKD]
THE MATRIX [uncredited PKD]
MINORITY REPORT [PKD]
DARK CITY [uncredited PKD]
A SCANNER DARKLY [PKD]
NEXT [PKD]
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND [uncredited PKD]
eXistenz [uncredited PKD]
DREAMSCAPE
DONNIE DARKO
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
MEMENTO
12 MONKEYS / LA JETEE
THE TERMINATOR
PRINCE OF DARKNESS
EVENT HORIZON
all 4 versions of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
ADAPTATION
VIDEODROME
VANILLA SKY
LOST HIGHWAY
FIGHT CLUB
JACOBS LADDER
SOLARIS
SUNSHINE
SCREAMERS [PKD]
LOST HIGHWAY
ERASERHEAD
THE 13TH FLOOR [A REAL GEM based on Simulcra 13 a long lost SF gem] and don't get me started on novels and short stories that tackle 'Conceptual breakthrough' or going behind the curtain that masks our reality...
I've probably overlooked many, this is off the top of my head
*[Uncredited PKD] = movies I feel have been influenced by PKD
Some of the PKD film adaptations were poor, as are some of the others on the list, but THE GAME is excellent - excellent and a movie I watch regularly - and Fincher did a great job with ZODIAC which also looks under the reality of the serial killings in 1970's San Francisco.
Ali -
Wow, a fascinating list and a great comment. Thanks!
Of the films in the list, my favourite might just be The Truman Show, a quite wonderful movie. And of course I liked Memento.
I don't read much sci-fi these days, but I like to relax to the occasional sci-fi film, and I saw Event Horizon not long ago.
Turning to crime novels, Ali, do you know The Face on the Cutting Room Floor, one of my favourite strange mystery novels?
Thanks Martin, for the tip-off about "The Face on the Cutting Room Floor" and I have to own up not knowing about this work.
Just ordered a copy from ABE Books as it sounds rather special.
It sounds really fascinating -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Face_on_the_Cutting-Room_Floor
To Quote from the Wiki entry -
"Forgotten for decades, Borneman's first novel was rediscovered in the 1960s by Ordean A. Hagen, who praised it as one of the milestones of crime fiction in his Who Done It?. In the early 1970s Julian Symons, in his history of crime fiction entitled Bloody Murder, famously referred to The Face as "the detective story to end detective stories".
However, the identity of the author was a mystery itself. Neither Symons nor the Gollancz publishing house knew anything about a Cameron McCabe, not even whether he was still alive or not. Accordingly, when Gollancz brought out their 1974 facsimile edition, only a few months after Symons had mentioned the novel, they advertised for McCabe's heirs and placed the royalties in a trust fund."
Another book for my reading!
Ali
Ali, you probably know this one, but I'd also mention The Red Right Hand by Joel Townsley Rogers as another, though very different, 'one-off' and unrepeatable classic.
Hi Martin
Yes, I grabbed a copy of the Right Red Hand [among others] when teh Rap Sheet did their One-Book project. In fact I discovered some gems in the lists that ran -
I love finding obscure work, in fact my abodes and offices are littered with them.
It is a red-letter day today as the postman brought an ARC of Lehane's THE GIVEN DAY.
It's been 5 long years since Shutter Island, while Coronado was a play and short story collection [I'd read the stories before].
I am clutching the book with me, but scared to read it as I have waited a long time for this book
Ali
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