MOVIE REVIEW: The Game

The Game stars Michael Douglas playing the successful, cold, ruthless, businessman Nicholas Van Orton much as he did 10 years earlier when he had the lead role as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. Co-staring is Sean Penn as Nicholas’s wayward brother Conrad and the alluring Deborah Kara Unger as Christine the evolving love interest.

Nicholas may be a successful businessman, but his position has come at the cost of his family life; we find him divorced and distant from his caring ex and detached from his brother. He even seems to struggle connecting with his long time housekeeper. He is basically living a cold and detached life that is haunted by images from his childhood when he witnessed his father committing suicide by leaping off the roof of their family home.

On Nicholas’s 48th birthday, significantly the same age as when his father took his own life, Conrad meets his brother for lunch and presents him with an unlikely gift. It is an opportunity to play a life changing game offered by a company called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). Without wishing to give the plot away, it is sufficient to say that the game causes a series of life changing events that start to reshape Nicholas. So why would this movie appeal to puzzlers? Well, for starters The Game is about just that, a game. Secondly, trying to solve the riddle that is unfolding in front of our eyes, and around Nicholas as he moves from one crisis to the next, is fun for those of us that love to get to the answer before it is given to us. As for the twist at the end, I leave that for you to judge. This DVD is a must for puzzlers and movie goers alike.