the audience applauded

Thanks for the memories!

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Rudy Duncan and Nick Cassidy are cellmates who are both due to be released in a couple of days; Rudy talks of getting out and having a mug of hot chocolate while Nick talks of meeting up with his pen pal girlfriend, Ashley. Then Nick is stabbed and apparently killed during a riot. On his release Rudy goes up to Ashley, who hasn't seen Nick, and takes his cellmate's place. Rudy's luck doesn't last long; it turns out Ashley's psychotic brother, Gabriel, has learnt of her relationship with Nick... the problem is he expects 'Nick' to help him and his gang rob the casino he'd worked in. Rudy knows a few details that Nick had mentioned but not enough to confidently commit the robbery. He will have to think fast if he is to survive; especially after he learns so surprising facts.This film, retitled 'Deception' here in the UK, opens well with a shot of a number of people in Santa costumes lying dead in the snow before jumping back six days to show us what led up to this scene. There is plenty of solid action, a real sense of danger and more twists than I expected. The story itself is rather far-fetched but as it moves at a decent pace that isn't a huge problem. Ben Affleck is solid as Rudy, Charlize Theron is suitably sexy as Ashley and Gary Sinise is delightfully over-the-top as Gabriel. There are plenty of twists, perhaps a few too many, as it turns out much of what characters and the viewer think is true turns to be a deception. Overall this isn't a must see but it is worth checking out if you are a fan of the genre.

REINDEER GAMES is one of those films I hate which try way too hard to be clever. As a 'thriller', it attempts to confound the audience by throwing in a major twist ever ten or fifteen minutes or so, totally twisting the story upon its head in an effort to be one step ahead. It doesn't work. The storyline just ends up being preposterous, unbelievable, you name it...and, in the end, this would have worked a lot better as a tension-fuelled heist movie, something like DOG DAY AFTERNOON.So, with an awful script sapping life from the viewer, what IS worth watching? John Frankenheimer's direction, for one. Frankenheimer, who directed the superlative RONIN as well as many other great flicks over the years, is way too good for this material. His direction is solid, as usual, with plenty of stylistic flourishes and well-handled moments of both suspense and action. It's very sad that this was his last completed work, as he deserves much better material than this.The cast, too, is better than you'd expect than in a failure of this type. Okay, so we're saddled with a typically bland Ben Affleck as the lead – his only good scene is when he's having darts chucked at him, which I'm convinced was done for real – and the equally uninteresting Charlie Theron, complete with a gratuitous topless scene, as his love interest. Further down the line, the cast gets more interesting. Gary Sinise is one of my favourite underrated villains, and as the bad guy here he's impossible to dislike: a rough, tough street-level crim with aspirations to make it big. You can't fault him. Then there are lots of familiar faces, seemingly stuck playing henchmen or prisoners: Isaac Hayes has a memorable cameo, Ron Jeremy is a prisoner, Donal Logue a lunk-headed thug, Dennis Farina a casino boss, Ashton Kutcher credited as 'college kid', and the ever-great Danny Trejo criminally underused as one of the bad guys.In the end, though, the ludicrousness saps this one dry, even if there are one or two half-decent suspense sequences along the way. Unfortunately, as in his other film PAYCHECK, Affleck is too bland and smarmy an actor to generate one ounce of empathy in the viewers, making this another forgettable attempt at something big.

Reindeer Games (2000):Dir: John Frankenheimer / Cast: Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron, Gary Sinise, Dennis Farina, James Frain: Laughable mess with a lame title. The only games being played are at the expense of the audience. Ben Affleck is two days away from prison release and he shares a cell with a guy who tells of the letters he receives from his girlfriend. Unfortunately his friend is stabbed during a riot and Affleck is left to inform the girlfriend but he decides to wait until after the holidays. That is the first of many stupid moves made in this crap. This obviously leads to sex where they thrash each other about as if a pay per view wrestling event. I cannot believe that John Frankenheimer took so much slack for directing The Island of Dr. Moreau when a film this bad would be a life sentence in some countries. This may very well be his worst film. Affleck delivers a laughable performance while Charlize Theron is cardboard as this conniving bimbo. Gary Sinise plays the villain who forces Affleck to rob casinos. The role allows him to constantly jab Affleck with a gun. Perhaps it was a reflect action having gone from Forrest Gump to this crap. Dennis Farina is wasted in another cardboard appearance. James Frain plays Affleck's pal in prison who is the connection to Theron. Pointless snow blown crap with a screenplay that was probably rewritten more times than the casino map. Score: 1 / 10

I needed to see Frankenheimer's final film. I was crushed. I have great difficulty understanding how the director of the subtle, lyrical thriller Ronin could have created and put his name to this mindless and miscast sequence of irrational plot twists and dull, meaningless physical beatings and chases. Plot twist is too nice a word for the unmotivated interminable reversals and red herrings. Viewers who don't always follow plot closely may easily lose track since it makes no sense.It tries and fails to be several things at once. It is primarily plot driven, but the plot is so ridiculous and full of holes and arbitrary reverses that one quickly ceases to bother predicting what will happen next. It's never surreal (might have helped) but it is so illogical. There is extensive brutality and gun play, but it is mostly of little consequence and seems more played for laughs. The entire climactic casino shootout seemed more comic than dramatic. Gary Sinese and his men's interminable beatings of Affleck have little dramatic impact after the initial one. The gun choreography is lazy with little sense of care or threat. There are moments meant to be comic, mostly Ben Affleck mugging, but virtually none of them work. There are multiple love affairs but these are just more red herrings to keep the plot tottering along--not one of them is convincing or deep.We're left with what I guess I'd call a dumb guy's popcorn heist movie along the lines of ; something that keeps us lurching forward with gunfire, the pounding score and the moving camera and letting us know that if we don't care about the current scene, something disconnected and brutal will be along in five minutes. CGI is missing; instead we get overacting. I cannot fathom how a script development process arrives at this conclusion. Nonstop unmotivated physical abuse is not interesting to most audiences. The lovers of cinematic mayhem will be so much happier with any Tarantino film or "The Raid" or even "Jack Reacher" where every fight means something and has a consequence. Here the violence just continues on repeat, with no one changing or learning or even dying for most of the picture.