The Game 1997

Janet Maslin, New York Times: Douglas, who delivers a new shade of cruel elegance each time he plays another urbane monster, is the ideal star for this vigorously contrived thriller. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: This 1997 thriller is fairly entertaining nonsense if all you're looking for is 128 minutes of diversion. But if you'd like something more from David Fincher, the director of Seven, don't get your hopes up. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The Game is an intensely exciting puzzle-gimmick thriller, the kind of movie that lets you know from the start that it's slyly aware of its own absurdity (which is why it can then get away with it). Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: As it's unspooling on screen, the film is hugely entertaining, but there are several significant plot holes that grow wider the more closely they're investigated. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Douglas is 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. Read more

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: Fincher is still working on the assumption that he has better things to do than entertain an audience. Which would be fine if he weren't drawn to such schlocky material. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The picture provides Douglas with one of his best roles. If he doesn't quite reach the bizarre heights he achieved in Falling Down, The Game makes its own demands. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: The film's 'message' about complacency transformed by chaos and uncertainty is hackneyed... Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Regardless of how far one chooses to buy into The Game -- and the ending ambiguously suggests that it could go on and on -- there is no doubt as to Fincher's staggering expertise as a director and his almost clinical sense of precision. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: It's like the most hideously overproduced episode of The Twilight Zone on record, complete with a last twist that pretty much reduces what came before to soap bubbles. Read more