Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
Ben Affleck provides a charismatic star turn, but John Frankenheimer's out-of-season heist thriller is dead on arrival.
Feb 25, 2000 | Ben Affleck goes through "Reindeer Games" taking more punishment than Cary Grant's blue suit in "North by Northwest." And after being kicked, punched, beaten, slammed into walls, bashed with a gun, shot at and used as a human dartboard, he comes out looking nearly as good. That Affleck manages to give a performance at all in director John Frankenheimer's ludicrously sleazy pulp is remarkable. That he manages to turn in a charismatic piece of star acting is rather amazing. As it barrels along in its brain-dead manner, "Reindeer Games" becomes less about a plot to rob a casino than a demonstration of what Affleck can withstand. Shoddy direction? No problem. Crummy script? A snap. Cinematography that's less attractive than the nearest subway washroom? Bring it on. Affleck laughs in the face of hackwork.
Actually, there's a sliver of an amusing idea floating around in this trash. Affleck plays Rudy, a car thief who's released from prison and decides to impersonate his dead cellmate in order to score with Ashley (Charlize Theron), the looker who'd been the dead man's romantic prison pen pal. It works like a charm until Ashley's slimeball brother, Gabriel (Gary Sinise), shows up. It seems that in addition to steamy endearments, Rudy's cellmate had filled his letters to Ashley with tales of the casino where he'd worked as a security guard. Gabriel got his hands on the letters and hatched a plan to use the information, and his sister's new boyfriend, to rob the place on Christmas Eve. So Rudy finds himself with family problems before he's even joined the family: convince his new girl's psycho brother that he is the man he's impersonating, or be killed for being an impostor.
That's a premise that Elmore Leonard might have worked some jim-dandy twists on. But I've read Elmore Leonard, and screenwriter Ehren Kruger, ladies and gentlemen, is no Elmore Leonard. Kruger, previously the writer of "Arlington Road" and "Scream 3," is like a kid with a balloon, seeing how big he can blow it up and, inevitably, having it blow up in his face. He can't resist providing just one twist more and, in the process, makes everything that's come before collapse into implausibility.
Still, a director with enough style and wit to ride over the script's trashiness might have made "Reindeer Games" into a fairly good time. As usual, though, Frankenheimer brings it all the style of brown shoes worn with a tuxedo. Apparently, Frankenheimer has never met a close-up he didn't like. He brings the camera in so close to the actors' faces that even the widescreen can't encompass them.
I gave up on Frankenheimer's last picture, "Ronin," after 40 minutes. By the time the plot moved to the Mediterranean and I was stuck looking at yet another crummy hotel room, I felt as if I'd been condemned to spend the afternoon in a bus station. On the basis of those 40 minutes and all of "Reindeer Games," I'd have to say that Frankenheimer is developing what is quite possibly the single ugliest visual style of any director currently working. Shot in uniformly flat lighting by Alan Caso in a succession of cheap diners, anonymous motel rooms, a cinder-block casino and the back of an 18-wheeler, "Reindeer Games" has the greenish-brown tint of yellowing wallpaper and moldering carpet. There isn't a scene that's not an insult to the eyes. And the movie has a spirit to match.
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