If you are at all an intelligent human. If you have reason and logic. You will not like this film. It starts off okay, but when the game is meant to make him happy or whatever. Great we get it. He's gotta enjoy life so he doenst kill himself like his Daddy. So we know it's all fake. But wait! It wasn't fake. It was a scam to steal his money! But wait! There's still 30 minutes left and I'm certain it's not going to be 30 minutes of Taken part 4: the late 90s Michael Douglas edition. So the game is still on and everything's fine. I was complaining about the movie the whole time, waiting for it not to follow a really predictable series of events.But it did. And I was right to complain.

Even though i realized early on, this would be one of those movies, that would break down and descend into absurdity, i have to admit , that I found it suspenseful and entertaining.

Movie Review: "The Game" (1997)Director David Fincher taking a seemingly-simplistic plot and makes into a thriller of superlatives with every scene revealing as disguising pieces of a threading puzzle of life-and-death situations for ultra-rich in money, but low on character Nicholas Van Orton, exceptionally compelling portrayed by Michael Douglas, who carries the picture on his shoulders in the director's signature-defining suspense-techniques, which become even more classy in "The Game" fulfilling attempt of maturity, when preceeding "Se7en" (1995) and succeeding "Fight Club" (1999) must remain striking strokes of a director's youth."The Game" in retrospective tells its original story written by co-writers John Brancato & Michael Ferris in eye-catching high-concept fashions with respect to enterprising as daring producers Céan Chaffin and Steve Golin raising a 50-Million-Dollar production budget for 34-year-old David Fincher in order to let him exceed the page with exceptional-elegant cinematography by Harry Savides (1957-2012) and production design by Jeffrey Beecroft, who so fulminated ranges his art directions efforts from neo-realism to hyper-synthesizing science-fiction scenarios in future-wising "Transformers: Age of Extinction" (2014) for director Michael Bay, when here every single film-making department falls into place to the most intriguing as entertaining thriller of the 1990s.Futhermore supporting cast members, including Sean Penn as distressed as exaggerating brother Conrad over Deborah Kara Unger as poker-face mimicking even in jeans seductively-sexy Christine to Armin Mueller-Stahl as further trails-laying Anson Baer, when Michael Douglas delivers with all his skill of method to splendid moment of improvisition a picture to be marked as arguably the best of his now up to five decades spanning career.© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Michael Douglas' performance superbly holds this film together. Now matter how ludicrous the plot becomes - and it does become ludicrous - Douglas plays it so that he and the audience together are none the wiser and piece it together at the same speed. Although it seemed highly original to me at first, in fact its plot owes a lot to the 1984 Remington Steele episode 'Elementary Steele'. The fact that punters have paid £500 to a business so as to take part in 'The Game' where a mystery is laid out for them around the city to solve; the fact that it starts to look like a scam; that the punters (playing Holmes and Watson) chase someone who they think is part of The Game but she protests she is not, and says she is just an actress, when she clearly knows more than she is letting on; plus. gunshots fired (at Remington Steele) in the street turn out to be blanks because the gun is part of the Game; plus, when Remington Steele visits the business's offices (doing his detective there), he finds almost no-one and nothing in the room (basic office furniture); etc, etc. All these things are developed in the Michael Douglas film, turning a light romp into a dark thriller that keeps you guessing. Highly entertaining and tense. It's increasingly less and less plausible but Douglas keeps you believing, just.