The Game | |
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Directed by | David Fincher |
Produced by | Cean Chaffin Steve Golin |
Written by | John Brancato Michael Ferris Uncredited: Andrew Kevin Walker |
Starring | Michael Douglas Sean Penn Deborah Kara Unger James Rebhorn Peter Donat Armin Mueller-Stahl |
Music by | Howard Shore |
Cinematography | Harris Savides |
Editing by | James Haygood |
Distributed by | United States: PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Scandinavia: Buena Vista International |
Release date(s) | September 12, 1997 |
Running time | 129 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $50 million |
Box office |
$48,323,648(domestic) |
The Game is a 1997 neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by David Fincher, starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn, and produced by Polygram Filmed Entertainment. 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.[1] The Game had middling box-office returns compared to the success of Fincher's previous film, Seven. It was ranked #44 on Bravo's The 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
Plot
Nicholas Van Orton (Douglas) 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 fellow club members 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 (Deborah Kara 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 claiming that he too 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 psychological test, is an actor who works in television advertisements. 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. 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 realizes that Nicholas' gun is not a prop and is terrified. She 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, just as his late father did.
Nicholas' life passes before his eyes as he falls. He smashes through a glass roof and lands on a giant air bag. Emergency medical technicians 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 breaks into tears, 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 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 Katarina as Elizabeth
- Armin Mueller-Stahl as Anson Baer
- Charles Martinet as Nicholas' father
Production
The Game began as a spec screenplay, written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris in 1991.[2] 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.[2] Producer Steve Golin bought the script from MGM and gave it to David Fincher in the hopes that he would direct.[3] 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.[3] 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".[4] 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".[5] 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.'"[2] 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.[6] In 1996, Larry Gross and Walker were brought in to make further revisions to the script.[7]
Fincher intended to make The Game before Seven but when Brad Pitt became available that project took priority.[3] 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.[3] At the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, Polygram announced that Jodie Fosterwould be starring in the film with Douglas.[6] 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.[6] 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.[8]
Principal photography began on location in San Francisco, despite studio pressure to shoot in Los Angeles which was cheaper.[7] 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".[7] 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.[7]
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.[9] 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".[9] For The Game, Fincher employed aTechnicolor 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?"[10] 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".[10]
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.[11] The actor was in a small compartment that was designed to resemble the backseat of a taxi with three cameras capturing the action.[12] Principal photography lasted 100 days with a lot of shooting done at night utilizing numerous locations.[13]
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.[14]
The Game opened to fairly positive reviews with a 80% "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".[15] 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".[16] 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)".[17] 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".[18] 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".[19] 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".[20] 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".[21]
The film was #44 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.[22][dead link]
出 品 國:USA
出 品:
發 行 商:派拉蒙影業
語 言:English
色 彩:Color
音 效:
導演: | 大衛芬奇 |
編劇: | 約翰布蘭卡托 麥可費里斯 |
演員: | 麥克道格拉斯 西恩潘 黛博拉揚格 詹姆斯里伯霍恩 |
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幕後消息:
道格拉斯(Michael Douglas)說:『康洛德告訴尼可拉斯他在倫敦玩經歷。但卻保留了所有細節。電影最刺激的一點是,無論是尼可拉斯或觀眾,都不知道哪些是真實事件,哪些又是由CRS所編造出來遊戲的一部份。』
他認為:『《致命遊戲》是我近年來讀到最好的劇本,我把它視為21世紀的雲霄飛車,每年都有人希望把雲霄飛車做更快一點,可以嚇倒你。這部片子對你的心理是個練習;更由於心理有較多的想像力,因此比任何實際的東西更可怖。』
被本片劇本及導演大衛芬奇(David Fincher)合作所吸引的道格拉斯,清楚地談到他對題材及劇本的選擇:『我認為世界並黑白分明。愛憎並存的矛盾心理最吸引我,人非聖賢,也非惡魔,只是存在於其間罷了。我很幸運可以扮演這個原本被觀眾討厭的角色,之後他們會漸漸瞭解你的兩難之處或你的問題所在。尼可拉斯並不是一個好人,最初你可能也不很喜歡,但若你順著他的腳步,你會認同他直到最後結局。』
這個故事同時也揭露了金錢和權力都不穩固的假象。『擁有大筆財富的人們是被保護的、被隔離的,』道格拉斯說,『他們從大多數的現實生活中被移開,而活在象牙塔裡。這部片子是關於當人除掉所有的衣物和安全防護後,他會沈下去?還是會游泳?』
這位奧斯卡金像獎得主在拍攝《致命遊戲》時,面臨了一份極具挑戰性的時間表。首先,在本片92場戲中,他就有88場等著拍攝;如果拍片還有空檔,他必須全力處理自己製作公司(道格拉斯-路德製片)製作的二部電影──法蘭西斯柯波拉(Francis Ford Coppola)執導的《造雨人》(The Rainmaker)、吳宇森執導的《變臉》(Face Off);以及為另一部與方基墨(Val Kilmer)合演的《暗夜獵殺》(The Ghost and the Darkness)做宣傳。
身為拍了20多部片的老資格,道格拉斯承認當他第一次和34歲的導演合作時內心充滿好奇。『我在想:這會不會又是一個拍攝錄影帶的年輕導演?你知道,就是自命不凡、橫衝直撞那種。但是經過《致命遊戲》的合作後,我對他的眼界感到驚訝,他不但有完整的技術背景,而且他的耳目似乎經過特別訓練,可以觀察到任何細微間的區別。在我過去的作品中,能與如同大衛芬奇這樣有才氣的導演合作,似乎只有二位而已。」
以上資訊來自網路