The Game (film)
Encyclopedia
The Game is a 1997
neo-noir
psychological thriller film directed by David Fincher
, starring Michael Douglas
and 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, hints of a large conspiracy become apparent.
The Game was well received by critics like Roger Ebert
and major periodicals like The New York Times
, though Leonard Maltin
found the film "unusually mean-spirited" and lacking a sense of humor. The Game had middling box-office returns compared to the success of Fincher's previous film, Seven. It was ranked #44 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments
.
) is a successful and 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. He remains haunted from having seen his father commit suicide on the latter's 48th birthday. On his own 48th birthday, Conrad (Penn
), Nicholas' rebellious younger brother, presents Nicholas with an unusual gift—a voucher for a "game" offered by a company called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). Conrad promises that it will change Nick's life.
Nicholas has doubts about the gift and delays calling CRS. A chance encounter with business associates who enjoyed the Game changes Nicholas' mind. He goes to the organization's offices to apply and is irritated by the lengthy and time-consuming series of psychological and physical examinations required. He is later informed that his application has been rejected.
This is a ruse however: the Game has already begun. Starting with the merely invasive and rapidly escalating to the potentially criminal, Nicholas believes that his business, reputation, finances, and safety are at risk. He encounters a waitress, Christine (Unger
), who appears to have been caught up in the game and also comes under risk. Nicholas contacts the police to investigate CRS, but they find the offices abandoned.
Eventually, Conrad appears to Nicholas and apologizes for the Game. He himself has come under attack by CRS. With no one else to turn to, Nicholas finds Christine's home. He soon discovers that she is a CRS employee and that her apartment has simply been staged to look like a real apartment. Christine tells Nicholas that they are being watched. Nicholas attacks a camera, and armed CRS troops begin to swarm the house and fire upon them. Nicholas and Christine are forced to flee. Nicholas realizes that CRS has drained his financial accounts, and he is now broke. Christine tells him that some of his closest associates are part of the Game. Just as he begins to trust Christine, he realizes she has drugged him, and he falls unconscious.
Nicholas wakes up to find himself entombed in a cemetery in Mexico. He is forced to sell his gold watch to return to the United States. Upon his return, he finds that his mansion has been ransacked and vandalized by CRS. He retrieves a hidden gun, and seeks the aid of his estranged wife. While talking with her and apologizing for his neglect and mistreatment of her, he discovers that Jim Feingold (James Rebhorn
), the CRS employee who had conducted his physiological test, is an actor in a television advertisement. He locates Feingold and forces him to take Nicholas to CRS, where he takes Christine hostage. He demands to be taken to the leader of the organization. Christine realizes that Nicholas' gun is not a prop and is terrified. Attacked by CRS troops, Nicholas takes Christine to the roof and bars the door behind them. The CRS troops begin cutting through the door. Christine frantically tells Nicholas that the conspiracy is a hoax, a fiction that is just part of the Game, that his finances are intact and that his family and friends are waiting on the other side of the door. He refuses to believe her. The door bursts open, and Nicholas shoots the first person to emerge: his brother Conrad, bearing an open bottle of champagne. Distraught, Nicholas leaps off the roof.
Nicholas' life passes before his eyes as he falls. He smashes through a glass roof and lands on a giant air bag. Emergency medical technician
s carefully remove him, warning him to keep his eyes closed until they remove the fragments of breakaway glass. Nicholas finds he is in a ballroom full of his friends, family, and every figure involved in his Game; it had been just a game all along. Conrad is alive and well, and explains that he initiated the game to get his brother to embrace life and not end up like their father. Nicholas relaxes, and begins to enjoy the party once his shock has dissipated. Later, Nicholas splits the bill for the game with Conrad (and is surprised to discover how expensive it all was). When he sees that Christine has left the party, he follows her outside to her cab. He asks her to dinner, and she offers to enjoy a private coffee with him now before her flight takes her to her next Game assignment.
in 1991. 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. Producer Steve Golin
bought the script from MGM and gave it to David Fincher in the hopes that he would direct. 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. 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 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". 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.'" 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. In 1996, Larry Gross
and Walker were brought in to make further revisions to the script.
Fincher intended to make The Game before Seven
but when Brad Pitt
became available that project took priority. 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. At the 1996 Cannes Film Festival
, Polygram announced that Jodie Foster
would be starring in the film with Douglas. 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. Deborah Kara Unger's audition for the role of Christine was a 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.
Principal photography began on location in San Francisco, despite studio pressure to shoot in Los Angeles which was cheaper. 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". 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 of San Francisco
, and the historic Filoli Mansion
, 25 miles south of San Francisco in Woodside, California
, which stood in for the Van Orton mansion.
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. 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". 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?" 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".
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. The actor was in a small compartment that was designed to resemble the backseat of a taxi with three cameras capturing the action. Principal photography lasted 100 days with a lot of shooting done at night utilizing numerous locations.
The Game opened to fairly positive reviews with a 70% "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". 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". 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
)". 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". 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". 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". 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".
The film was #44 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments
.
1997 in film
-Events:* The original Star Wars trilogy's Special Editions are released.* Production begins on Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.* Titanic becomes the first film to gross US$1,000,000,000 at the box office making it the highest grossing film in history until Avatar broke the record in 2010.*...
neo-noir
Neo-noir
Neo-noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s.-History:The term Film Noir was coined by...
psychological thriller film directed by David Fincher
David Fincher
David Andrew Leo Fincher is an American film and music video director. Known for his dark and stylish thrillers, such as Seven , The Game , Fight Club , Panic Room , and Zodiac , Fincher received Academy Award nominations for Best Director for his 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and...
, starring Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...
and Sean Penn
Sean Penn
Sean Justin Penn is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his political and social activism...
, and produced by Polygram
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment was a film studio, founded in 1979 as a European competitor to Hollywood, but eventually sold and merged with Universal Pictures in 1999....
. 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, hints of a large conspiracy become apparent.
The Game was well received by critics like Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
and major periodicals like The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, though Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...
found the film "unusually mean-spirited" and lacking a sense of humor. The Game had middling box-office returns compared to the success of Fincher's previous film, Seven. It was ranked #44 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments
100 Scariest Movie Moments
The 100 Scariest Movie Moments is a television documentary miniseries that first aired in late October 2004 on Bravo. Aired in five 60-minute segments, the miniseries counts down what producer Anthony Timpone, writer Patrick Moses, and director Kevin Kaufman have determined as the 100 most...
.
Plot
Nicholas Van Orton (DouglasMichael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...
) is a successful and 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. He remains haunted from having seen his father commit suicide on the latter's 48th birthday. On his own 48th birthday, Conrad (Penn
Sean Penn
Sean Justin Penn is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his political and social activism...
), Nicholas' rebellious younger brother, presents Nicholas with an unusual gift—a voucher for a "game" offered by a company called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). Conrad promises that it will change Nick's life.
Nicholas has doubts about the gift and delays calling CRS. A chance encounter with business associates who enjoyed the Game changes Nicholas' mind. He goes to the organization's offices to apply and is irritated by the lengthy and time-consuming series of psychological and physical examinations required. He is later informed that his application has been rejected.
This is a ruse however: the Game has already begun. Starting with the merely invasive and rapidly escalating to the potentially criminal, Nicholas believes that his business, reputation, finances, and safety are at risk. He encounters a waitress, Christine (Unger
Deborah Kara Unger
Deborah Kara Unger is a Canadian actress. She is known for her roles in the films Crash , The Game , The Hurricane , White Noise , Silent Hill and 88 Minutes...
), who appears to have been caught up in the game and also comes under risk. Nicholas contacts the police to investigate CRS, but they find the offices abandoned.
Eventually, Conrad appears to Nicholas and apologizes for the Game. He himself has come under attack by CRS. With no one else to turn to, Nicholas finds Christine's home. He soon discovers that she is a CRS employee and that her apartment has simply been staged to look like a real apartment. Christine tells Nicholas that they are being watched. Nicholas attacks a camera, and armed CRS troops begin to swarm the house and fire upon them. Nicholas and Christine are forced to flee. Nicholas realizes that CRS has drained his financial accounts, and he is now broke. Christine tells him that some of his closest associates are part of the Game. Just as he begins to trust Christine, he realizes she has drugged him, and he falls unconscious.
Nicholas wakes up to find himself entombed in a cemetery in Mexico. He is forced to sell his gold watch to return to the United States. Upon his return, he finds that his mansion has been ransacked and vandalized by CRS. He retrieves a hidden gun, and seeks the aid of his estranged wife. While talking with her and apologizing for his neglect and mistreatment of her, he discovers that Jim Feingold (James Rebhorn
James Rebhorn
James Robert Rebhorn is an American character actor who has appeared in over 100 television shows, feature films and plays.-Personal life:...
), the CRS employee who had conducted his physiological test, is an actor in a television advertisement. He locates Feingold and forces him to take Nicholas to CRS, where he takes Christine hostage. He demands to be taken to the leader of the organization. Christine realizes that Nicholas' gun is not a prop and is terrified. Attacked by CRS troops, Nicholas takes Christine to the roof and bars the door behind them. The CRS troops begin cutting through the door. Christine frantically tells Nicholas that the conspiracy is a hoax, a fiction that is just part of the Game, that his finances are intact and that his family and friends are waiting on the other side of the door. He refuses to believe her. The door bursts open, and Nicholas shoots the first person to emerge: his brother Conrad, bearing an open bottle of champagne. Distraught, Nicholas leaps off the roof.
Nicholas' life passes before his eyes as he falls. He smashes through a glass roof and lands on a giant air bag. Emergency medical technician
Emergency medical technician
Emergency Medical Technician or Ambulance Technician are terms used in some countries to denote a healthcare provider of emergency medical services...
s carefully remove him, warning him to keep his eyes closed until they remove the fragments of breakaway glass. Nicholas finds he is in a ballroom full of his friends, family, and every figure involved in his Game; it had been just a game all along. Conrad is alive and well, and explains that he initiated the game to get his brother to embrace life and not end up like their father. Nicholas relaxes, and begins to enjoy the party once his shock has dissipated. Later, Nicholas splits the bill for the game with Conrad (and is surprised to discover how expensive it all was). When he sees that Christine has left the party, he follows her outside to her cab. He asks her to dinner, and she offers to enjoy a private coffee with him now before her flight takes her to her next Game assignment.
Cast
- Michael DouglasMichael DouglasMichael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...
as Nicholas Van Orton - Sean PennSean PennSean Justin Penn is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his political and social activism...
as Conrad Van Orton - Deborah Kara UngerDeborah Kara UngerDeborah Kara Unger is a Canadian actress. She is known for her roles in the films Crash , The Game , The Hurricane , White Noise , Silent Hill and 88 Minutes...
as Christine - James RebhornJames RebhornJames Robert Rebhorn is an American character actor who has appeared in over 100 television shows, feature films and plays.-Personal life:...
as Jim Feingold - Peter DonatPeter DonatPeter Donat is a Canadian-American actor known for his roles in American television.-Early life:Donat was born Pierre Collingwood Donat in Kentville, Nova Scotia, Canada, the son of Marie and Philip Ernst Donat, a landscape gardener. His uncle was British actor Robert Donat...
as Samuel Sutherland - Carroll BakerCarroll BakerCarroll Baker is a former American actress who has enjoyed popularity as both a serious dramatic actress and, particularly in the 1960s, as a movie sex symbol...
as Ilsa - Anna KatarinaAnna Katarina-Filmography:* Star Trek: The Next Generation** episode Haven ... as Valeda Inn* The Blood of Heroes ... as Big Cimber* Slaves of New York ... as Mooshka* The Death of the Incredible Hulk ... as Bella/Voshenko...
as Elizabeth - Armin Mueller-StahlArmin Mueller-StahlArmin Mueller-Stahl is a German film actor, painter, writer and musician.-Early life:Mueller-Stahl was born in Tilsit, East Prussia...
as Anson Baer - Charles MartinetCharles MartinetCharles Martinet is an American actor and voice actor, best known for providing the voice of Mario, the titular character in Nintendo's flagship video game franchise. He has held this role since 1994, longer than any other actor. He also voices Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Toadsworth, and a select few...
as Nicholas' father
Production
The Game began as a spec screenplay, written by John Brancato and Michael FerrisJohn Brancato and Michael Ferris
John Brancato and Michael Ferris are a pair of American screenwriters, whose works include The Game, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation and Surrogates....
in 1991. It was sold that year to MGM, who put the project in turnaround, where it was picked up by Propaganda Films. Director Jonathan Mostow
Jonathan Mostow
Jonathan Mostow is an American film director, writer and producer.-Biography:A graduate of Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut and Harvard, Mostow also trained at the American Repertory Company and New York City's Lee Strasberg Institute...
was originally attached to the project with Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle Merritt MacLachlan is an American actor. MacLachlan is best known for his roles in cult films Blue Velvet as Jeffrey Beaumont, Showgirls as Zack Carey, as Paul Atreides in Dune, and Ray Manzarek in the Oliver Stone film The Doors...
and Bridget Fonda
Bridget Fonda
Bridget Jane Fonda is an American actress. She is best known for her roles in films such as The Godfather Part III, Single White Female, Point of No Return, It Could Happen to You, and Jackie Brown...
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. Producer Steve Golin
Steve Golin
Steve Golin is the founder and CEO of Anonymous Content LLP, a multimedia development, production and talent management company and co-founder and former CEO of Propaganda Films.-Propaganda Films:...
bought the script from MGM and gave it to David Fincher in the hopes that he would direct. Fincher liked the various plot twists but brought in Andrew Kevin Walker
Andrew Kevin Walker
Andrew Kevin Walker is an American BAFTA-nominated screenwriter. He is known for having written the Academy Award-nominated film Seven , for which he earned a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, as well as several other films, including 8mm , Sleepy Hollow and many...
, who had worked with him on Seven
Seven (film)
Seven is a 1995 American thriller film, which also contains horror and neo-noir elements, directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It was distributed by New Line Cinema and stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, R...
, 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. According to David Fincher, there were three primary influences on The Game. Michael Douglas' character was a "fashionable, good-looking Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge is the principal character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of the novel, Scrooge is a cold-hearted, tight-fisted and greedy man, who despises Christmas and all things which give people happiness...
, lured into a Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible is an American television series which was created and initially produced by Bruce Geller. It chronicled the missions of a team of secret American government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force . The leader of the team was Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves, except in...
situation with a steroid shot in the thigh from The Sting
The Sting
The Sting is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936 that involves a complicated plot by two professional grifters to con a mob boss . The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who previously directed Newman and Redford in the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.Created by...
". 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". 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.'" 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. In 1996, Larry Gross
Larry Gross
Larry Gross is an American screenwriter, producer, and occasionally a director. He won the 2004 Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival for We Don't Live Here Anymore.-Filmography:...
and Walker were brought in to make further revisions to the script.
Fincher intended to make The Game before Seven
Seven (film)
Seven is a 1995 American thriller film, which also contains horror and neo-noir elements, directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It was distributed by New Line Cinema and stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, R...
but when Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received two Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one...
became available that project took priority. 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. At the 1996 Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
, Polygram announced that Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....
would be starring in the film with Douglas. 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
Robert Zemeckis
Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit ,...
film Contact
Contact (film)
Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film adapted from the Carl Sagan novel of the same name and directed by Robert Zemeckis. Both Sagan and wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film adaptation of Contact....
and could not appear in The Game. Once she left, the role of Conrad was offered to Jeff Bridges
Jeff Bridges
Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges is an American actor and musician. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart....
but he declined and Sean Penn was cast instead. Deborah Kara Unger's audition for the role of Christine was a test reel consisting of a two-minute sex scene from David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the...
's Crash
Crash (1996 film)
Crash is a 1996 Canadian/British drama thriller film written and directed by David Cronenberg based on the J. G. Ballard 1973 novel of the same name. It tells the story of a group of people who take sexual pleasure from car accidents, a notable form of paraphilia. The film generated considerable...
. Douglas thought it was a joke but when he and Fincher met her in person, they were impressed by her acting.
Principal photography began on location in San Francisco, despite studio pressure to shoot in Los Angeles which was cheaper. 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
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
vibe". 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
Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape but 20% larger than Central Park in New York, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles long east to west, and about half a...
, the Presidio of San Francisco
Presidio of San Francisco
The Presidio of San Francisco is a park on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area...
, and the historic Filoli Mansion
Filoli
Filoli is a country house set in of formal gardens surrounded by estate, located in Woodside, California, about 25 miles south of San Francisco, at the southern end of Crystal Springs Lake, on the eastern slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains....
, 25 miles south of San Francisco in Woodside, California
Woodside, California
Woodside is a small incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. It uses a council-manager system of government. The U.S. Census estimated the population of the town to be 5,287 in 2010....
, which stood in for the Van Orton mansion.
For the visual look of Nicholas' wealthy lifestyle, Fincher and the film's cinematographer Harris Savides
Harris Savides
Harris Savides is a contemporary American cinematographer. Notable films include Gus Van Sant's "young death" trilogy , The Game, Zodiac and American Gangster....
wanted a "rich and supple" feel and took references from films like The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
which featured visually appealing locations with ominous intentions lurking under the surface. 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". For The Game, Fincher employed a Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
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?" 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".
The scene where Nicholas' taxi drives into the San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
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. The actor was in a small compartment that was designed to resemble the backseat of a taxi with three cameras capturing the action. Principal photography lasted 100 days with a lot of shooting done at night utilizing numerous locations.
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.The Game opened to fairly positive reviews with a 70% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
and 61 metascore at Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
. Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
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". In her review for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
wrote, "Mr. Fincher, like Michael Douglas in the film's leading role, does show real finesse in playing to the paranoia of these times". Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
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
The Parallax View
The Parallax View is a 1974 American thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Warren Beatty, Paula Prentiss, Hume Cronyn and William Daniels. The film was adapted by David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr and an uncredited Robert Towne from the 1970 novel by Loren Singer...
, Total Recall
Total Recall
Total Recall is a 1990 American science fiction action film. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, Ronny Cox & Mel Johnson, Jr.. It is based on the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”...
)". 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". Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
gave the film a "B+" rating and Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is an American film critic for Entertainment Weekly, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix....
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". In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, 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". However, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine's Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
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".
The film was #44 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments
100 Scariest Movie Moments
The 100 Scariest Movie Moments is a television documentary miniseries that first aired in late October 2004 on Bravo. Aired in five 60-minute segments, the miniseries counts down what producer Anthony Timpone, writer Patrick Moses, and director Kevin Kaufman have determined as the 100 most...
.
See also
- Twist ending
- The Game (treasure hunt)The Game (treasure hunt)The Game is a non-stop 24–48 hour treasure hunt, puzzlehunt or road rally that has run in the San Francisco Bay and Seattle areas since 1973. Its teams use vans rigged with power and Internet access and drive hundreds of miles from puzzle site to puzzle site, overcoming often outrageous physical...
- Alternate reality gameAlternate reality gameAn alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions....
- Seconds (film)Seconds (film)Seconds is a 1966 American film starring Rock Hudson. Characterized sometimes as a science fiction thriller, but with elements of horror, neo-noir, psychedelia, and drama, it was directed by John Frankenheimer with a screenplay by Lewis John Carlino. The script was based on a novel by David Ely...
, 1966, directed by John FrankenheimerJohn FrankenheimerJohn Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films...