All-work-and-no-play business tycoon Nicholas van Orton receives a strange birthday gift from his free-spirited younger brother: a meeting with a company that creates real-life games tailored specifically for each of its various customers, which soon plunges van Orton into a nightmarish world where reality and fantasy are indistinguishable.
After his debut film, the third installment of the Alien franchise, former commercial and music video director David Fincher carved out a deep, dark place for himself in Hollywood with his successful thriller Seven, a position he would solidify and enlarge with 1999's landmark genre-busting satire Fight Club. In-between, he took on this screenplay that almost seems like a warmup for the later film, but instead of focusing on emasculated and directionless 30-something men, The Game takes a look at an older, more successful man whose life may be just as devoid of meaning.
The cast is headed by Michael Douglas, who ironically played an aggressive, amoral capitalist in Oliver Stone's film Wall Street ten years earlier, and The Game could almost be considered a comeuppance of that character (though Stone now has his own sequel due out this year). Douglas is joined by fellow Oscar-winner Sean Penn, Deborah Kara Unger, James Rebhorn, and Armin Mueller-Stahl.
Shot on location in San Francisco by cinematographer Harris Savides (who would collaborate with Fincher again on the Bay Area-centered film Zodiac, as well as working on Gus Van Sant's Milk), the film also boasts a score by Lord of the Rings composer Howard Shore.
While the film received mixed reviews upon its release, and only did fair business at the box office, it clearly follows some of Fincher's common themes regarding class consciousness, the difficulties connecting with others in the modern world and the decay of society, as well as the exploration of what makes up a fulfilled life, something not just depicted in The Game and Fight Club, but in Seven, Panic Room and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as well.
Film runs approximately 2 hours, and will begin at 8:30pm.
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