# Reindeer Games (2000)

### reviewed by
Berge Garabedian

    REINDEER GAMES
    RATING: 5.5 /10 --> Not good enough to recommend

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Allow me to get philosophical on you for a minute. If a bad ending were to fall in an otherwise "okay" movie and you were sitting in the audience to witness it...would it be considered a "bad" movie? Well, in the case of this film, the ending was so over-the-top that it just tore away any cozy feelings that I had burrowed in me during the hour and a half previous. A note to writer Ehren Kruger: it's called over-writing...look into it : )

PLOT: A convict gets out of jail and finally meets the girl that he'd heard so much about during his stint in the big house. Unfortunately for the tender loving duo, the girl's older brother decides to crash their party and blackmail the ex-con into helping him and his gang of hooligans rob the Tomahawk casino.

CRITIQUE: An okay movie with a few decent one-liners, a couple of semi-interesting action sequences and Charlize Theron looking great is dramatically killed with an ending so ridiculous that it practically washes away the entire entertainment value of its previous ninety minutes. I say "practically" because I do not like to blow a movie off just because "one aspect" of the film didn't click for me, so let me tell you what I did like about this film. First of all, Charlize Theron is now officially a grade A movie star! She's the type of actress that can make you love her no matter what she says, does, wears or doesn't wear. She is a beauty to behold, a solid thespian in her own right and a sparkplug of charisma, all wrapped in one. Fans of Charlize will love her in this film, as will fans of Theron's boobies, which make an uncredited cameo about halfway through the picture. Ben Affleck does an okay job, but his performance in this film won't be putting him on the Brendan Fraser action-hero map anytime soon (To be fair, Big Ben also flashes us some ass during an early sex-scene). And let's not forget Sinise, who fills the shoes of the official "bad guy" pretty well, as well as his tank top, which he fills rather nicely with his newly buffed body. Nice biceps, dude!

So the actors were are all pretty good, the film started with an intriguing shot (Five dead bloody Santa suits spread across old man winter), and it even included a couple of neat twists and turns. So what went wrong? Unfortunately, the film on the whole just runs along with a little humor here and there, a little bit of pseudo-romance, which actually drags the film down especially at the very beginning, a little bit of action and an even smaller bit of suspense. All in all, nothing to majorly crow about, but certainly a film which I would have had no problem recommending to people who liked Theron or Affleck, like "winter" movies and Christmas songs and didn't mind suspending their disbelief every now and again. But unfortunately for Frankenheimer and crew, they decided to finish the movie off with one of the most absurd endings that I've seen in a while. So whatever little recommendation there was left in me by that point disappeared along with all sense of reality in the script. Of course, to each his own, and God knows every single one of us has our own barometer of far-fetchedness, so who knows, maybe you won't mind the ending so much. But as much as my buddy and I tried to make sense of the cards that we were dealt during this film's final moments, it was obvious that neither one of us could pretend that any of it made much sense.

An okay movie...with a laughable ending.

Little known facts about the movie and its stars: Charlize Theron stands 5'9". She is fluent in Afrikaans. Ben Affleck stands 6'3". He speaks decent Spanish. Apparently, poor ol' Ben was accidentally knocked unconscious by football player Dana Stubblefield during the filming of this movie when Stubblefield slipped and knocked Affleck down. Bennie was quickly taken to the hospital, and fully recovered. Clarence Williams III is best remembered for his part of Linc Hayes, his big-ass afro role in TV's "The Mod Squad". When Senator Robert Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, it was his good friend John Frankenheimer who had personally driven him there that day. Writer Ehren Kruger is the latest flavor of the month in Hollywood, with no less than three films carrying his writing credits in the past year alone. Besides this one, he also wrote the thriller ARLINGTON ROAD (7/10) and the last of the Scream movies entitled SCREAM 3 (7.5/10). Watch closely and you will notice singer Isaac Hayes in a small cameo part at the beginning of this movie, as the convict in jail who finds a roach in his jello, eventually leading to a food fight. You will also note the acting debut of Washington Redskins tackle Dana Stubblefield who plays another fierce convict named Alamo. Apparently while casting for the film, director Frankenheimer told his associates that he "wanted a mean, tough guy to play Alamo. I want a guy like that Dana Stubblefield". When the filmmakers contacted the ballplayer, he was more than willing to play the part. Thankfully the filmmakers decided not to change this film's title from the pretty cool REINDEER GAMES to the very lame DECEPTION. This film was shot entirely in the province of British Columbia, Canada.

    Review Date: February 21, 2000
    Director: John Frankenheimer
    Writer: Ehren Kruger
    Producers: Bob Weinstein, Marty Katz and Chris Moore
    Actors: Ben Affleck as Rudy
    Charlize Theron as Ashley
    Gary Sinise as Gabriel
    Genre: Thriller
    Year of Release: 2000
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    (c) 2000 Berge Garabedian

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