Reindeer Games Movie
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Storyline
TAGLINES
The trap is set. The game is on.
After being imprisoned for six years on a grand theft auto charge, Rudy Duncan (Ben Affleck) and his cellmate Nick (James Frain) are finally going to be paroled. After hearing endless stories during his incarceration of Nick's romantic correspondence to a woman named Ashley he has never met (Charlize Theron), Rudy is looking forward to returning to his family and having a fresh cup of hot chocolate. When Nick is killed during a prison riot, Rudy decides to assume Nick's identity upon release from prison and meet up with the unknown woman. Burdened with a base knowledge of Nick's Indian casino employment past, Rudy finds himself in too deep with Ashley's brother Gabriel (Gary Sinise) and is violently forced to cooperate with a casino robbery that Gabriel and his gang have been planning with Nick in mind.
| Charlize Theron | Ashley Mercer |
| Gary Sinise | Gabriel Mercer |
| Ben Affleck | Rudy Duncan |
| Donal Logue | Pug |
| Dennis Farina | Jack Bangs |
| James Frain | Nick Cassidy |
| Danny Trejo | Jumpy |
| Isaac Hayes | Zook |
| Gordon Tootoosis | Old Governor |
| Dana Stubblefield | The Alamo |
| Clarence Williams III | Merlin |
| Mark Acheson | Mean Guard |
| Tom Heaton | Ugly Staffer |
| Michael Sunczyk | Distant Inmate #1 |
| Douglas Arthurs | Distant Inmate #2 |
| John Frankenheimer |
5.30 out of 10 (10394 votes)
Visitor Reviews
what a ridiculous ending!
posted on 12 Aug 2009i'm not going to spoil the ending, but let me just say this- extremely far-fetched, absolutely implausible, impossible, ridiculous...get the point? the bad guy (i won't mention his name) had plotted this for years, down to the smallest detail. and it all turned out perfectly? with all the different people involved, nothing went wrong? c'mon, don't insult me!i actually enjoyed the majority of the movie. it was entertaining anyway & you get to see charlize naked. but the ending p***ed me off so bad that it took away anything good the movie had to offer. want a laugh? see this movie & laugh at how stupid it is...
Are you game?
posted on 04 May 2009After being imprisoned for six years on a grand theft auto charge, Rudy Duncan(Ben Affleck) and his cellmate Nick (HILARY AND JACKIE's James Frain) are finally going to be paroled. After hearing endless stories during his incarceration of Nick's romantic correspondence to a woman named Ashley he has never met (CIDER HOUSE RULES's Charlize Theron), Rudy is looking forward to returning to his family and having a fresh cup of hot chocolate. When Nick is killed during a prison riot, Rudy decides to assume Nick's identity upon release from prison and meet up with the unknown woman. Burdened with a base knowledge of Nick's Indian casino employment past, Rudy finds himself in too deep with Ashley's brother Gabriel (Gary Sinise) and is violently forced to cooperate with a casino robbery that Gabriel and his gang have been planning with Nick in mind.From an original screenplay by Ehren Kruger, REINDEER is very much in the same vein as his last script ARLINGTON ROAD. While much more of an action film than the paranoia drenched ROAD, REINDEER holds it's deceptions very close to it's heart as well. Who can you trust, and for how long? Helmed by esteemed director John Frankenheimer (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, RONIN), REINDEER seems keenly aware of it's inane story, yet he keeps pushing the proceedings along briskly, trying to keep this casino heist plot afloat with good actors and a passable script. It's fun just to watch this tale unfold. All the professionals involved know this material isn't CITIZEN KANE, but as action films go nowadays, REINDEER's restraint is it's most endearing aspect. No pop culture references, not too many exploding fireballs, and Frankenheimer keeps the edit count down. REINDEER GAMES is a far more classy film than it's brethren.It takes some time to get used to Ben Affleck as a tough ex-con. His baby face and peanut brittle voice do little to sell him as an action hero. As REINDEER trudges along, you get used to watching him act tough. It isn't the best performance that's come out of him (I'll save that honor for DOGMA), but Affleck is a likable enough guy and makes Rudy a character you want to see save the day. Imagine an aging lead vocalist for a Black Sabbath cover band and you'll have an idea what Gary Sinse looks like in REINDEER. He always makes a great passionate villain, but this time he takes his appearance one step further and actually looks like a threat. Charlize Theron keeps improving as an actress, but it is her new brunette look and honey smile that one takes away from her performance. She looks lovely in the snow, but not too much presence beyond that. The whole cast is somewhat stuck with Kruger's elementary script, and they all try hard to overcome it. It ends up being their individual charms that make REINDEER come out a winner.I liked REINDEER GAMES for the throwaway Christmas thriller that it is. Taking advantage of the topical Native American casino boom and deliberately waltzing away from many clichés, GAMES is a pleasure to enjoy. We need more of these. ----- 8
A nifty thriller
posted on 20 Apr 2009Ben Affleck takes another jump into the world of the actionmovie in the fast-paced action thriller "Reindeer Games." Thepretty-boy actor who once starred in nothing but Kevin Smithindependent movies stars as Rudy Duncan, a jailed car thief whois paroled for the holidays. But in prison, Rudy finds pen palletters of his fellow cellmate and sees that his buddy's pen palis this hot girl named Ashley (the sizzling Charlize Theron).But when Rudy's cellmate is killed during a prison riot, Rudyuses his death as a chance to get the girl. Once out, Rudy makessweet love to Ashley, not knowing that she might have set him upas a pawn for her older brother, the sinister Gabriel (GarySinise). Gabriel and his cronies force Rudy into a casino heist,but not if our hero Rudy can help it!It's pretty amusing to see Ben Affleck in another action film,like 1998's "Armageddon." Usually, an actor like Affleck can befound in those profanity-ridden independent love stories made byKevin Smith. It's going to take a lot of time to get used toseeing Affleck in an action flick that could have easily castedSly Stallone, but good old Ben pulls it off successfully here."Reindeer Games" would pack quite a punch for action fansbecause of the eye-popping stunts and the macho performances,but for those discriminating critics who don't believe inviolence as the movie's most popular points won't find anythingspe
Ben Affleck is the wrong guy for this genre
posted on 12 Apr 2009A nice movie of the master John Frankenheimer that will entertain
you action lovers out there. But I think that casting Mr Affleck was a mistake that made some scenes more unbelievable that they would be with a tougher guy. Anyway: 7/10
Funny, but not the way intended
posted on 27 Mar 2009Seeing this film made me think the producers wanted to benefit from the interest in stories about incompetent criminals generated by Fargo. This film, just like Fargo, opens with falling snow flakes, and a lot of the narrative drive consists of people being subject to misunderstandings or bad luck. The main character Rudy Duncan (Ben Affleck) is released from prison just before Christmas, but due to chance (and questionable morals) he is involved in a hopelessly ill-conceived and badly planned robbery masterminded by Gabriel (Gary Sinise), a long-haired Spinal Tap version of the hero from Apollo 13. Sinise is really funny, but seeing it I wasn't sure he was funny the way intended. His character is constantly undermined by ironic comments from his assistants, and some of the humor arises from him being so controlled and "uptight", not entirely mastering the bad guy look while reloading his sawed-off shotgun. In spite of several tattoos and convict jargon, Affleck does in my view not escape his tendency to look like mother-in-law's favorite son. It's the same as if Hugh Grant should try to play ex-convict: it just wouldn't work. The film being of the Christmas variety, it seems the producers were almost as badly in need of money as the film's Gabriel, since they went ahead and released it in February, instead of waiting. (4/10)
TV Pliot Desguised as Motion Picture
posted on 19 Feb 2009Reindeer Games(2000) had the makings of a great film except for the weaknesses in the acting, directing, and writing. Ronin(1998) in favor to that film was propelled by its acting and intellegence. Reindeer Games(2000) is a MTVish reworking of The Lady from Shanghai(1948). Ben Affleck seems wrong for the part of the protagonist. Frankenheimer's earlier film, 52 Pick Up(1986) covered the same territory and is a much better film then this. Gary Sinise is average in a role that I wished was played by actor, David Hess.
The Best Movie!
posted on 17 Feb 2009I saw this movie on opening day, it rules! It was the best movie I've seen since...well it's great. It is about Rudy Duncan(Ben) and his friend (Where the Heart Is's James Frain) are finnaly going to be parolled, and then the whole seemingly boring slow plot, spins wildly out of control on a non-stop thrill ride that is the best I have ever seen. Charlize Theron needs to pick a hair style and stick with it. Gary Sinise needs to cut his hair, bad! James Frain plays a small but VERY important part. There are many twists in this plot and the majority of the audience will not expect.-----10
An entertaining film to liven up a dull day!
posted on 14 Jan 2009I think that this was a good film, though the plot was a bit wishy washy. I don't personally think that it is a very likely plot in some places, but then again, films are only made for entertainment purposes and therefore this film achieved its goal. I was interested in the film almost straight away and was throughly involved throughout. I do recommend this film to anyone looking for a good night in!The acting was great, and I think that the direction given to the actors by John Frankenheimer was excellent. The actors created a feeling of mystery and suspense to the audience watching the film as well, which is obviously a vital element to a film of this genre.
Not a bad crime Flick, but deffo not the best
posted on 11 Dec 2008Personally i thought this movie was very amusing, some funny 1 liners from Ben Affleck, and some other amusing banters between Affleck/Sinise. With this cast i think, it's destined for success or at least a couple of cheers, it's the hippy mad cast, Gary Sinise(Ransom), Ben Affleck(Daredevil), Danny Trejo(From Dusk til Dawn trilogy), & the gorgeous Charlize Theron(Monster), with Pop ups of Ashton Kutcher & Michael Clarke Duncan! it's not the best crime movie to be compared with the likes of Heat, Assault on Precinct 13, Carlito's Way, or Casino. But take it as something on it's own, abit of fun to watch with afew friends, it's good light hearted Affleck fun. & also for the people who fancy Charlize Theron, you should buy this, there's an exciting, raunchy scene, not as raunchy as Two Days in the valley, but enough to wet your apatite. You might wanna rent rather than buy.
One of the better "action" movies.
posted on 03 Dec 2008I had no high expectations about this movie when a friend of mine had me watch it, but turned out this was one of the better movies in the action film genre. The plot has a few twists, the characters are somewhat believable (not supermen here) and the set is on a winter setting, snow and ice.And Gary Sinise does one of his best roles as "the" villain of this story.
an ok thriller
posted on 23 Nov 2008When I rented this movie on video, I didn't expect much because it was a huge flop at the box office and got very bad reviews. However, I enjoyed the movie. The most exciting fact about this movie is Charlize Theron. She plays the femme fatale that has two sides wonderfully.
I think she should definitely be in the next basic instict instead of old, wrinkly Sharone Stone. Other actors were good and the plot also was decent except for the last scene. It seems to me the movie tried to emphasize that Ben Affleck is a hero with a good heart who's completely not greedy. I think it was very unrealistic.
Good Action, Humor Takes Away the Suspense
posted on 18 Oct 2008This movie could have been a lot better if they didn't insert goofy humor into the action just as it gets really scary. Ben Affleck wasn't all that convincing as an ex-con. Especially when up against Gary Sinise who REALLY knows how to play a bad guy. Charlize Theron is as gorgeous and sexy as ever. The ending is worth the wait.
Some people miss the point, this movie is a riot!
posted on 16 Oct 2008Like Nicolas Cage in Red Rock West and Con Air, or Sean Penn in U-Turn, Ben Affleck is a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. In this case he impersonates a fellow inmate to get it on with Charlize Theron once he's released, only to find himself forced into an armed robbery scheme with a crazed looking long-haired Gary Sinise. Affleck is great; I was never a huge fan of his but he cracked me up with the way in which he kept pushing Sinise's buttons. Sinise is way over the top and keeps coming with the nasty one-liners. He enjoys a rather warped variation on dart-throwing for example.The Christmas setting makes things even funnier. If you like stuff like Red Rock West, Fargo, Midnight Run and Con Air this could be up your alley.
Don't expect anything resembling great art or serious suspense here, but it is pretty snappy with the one-liners and a real hoot.
Not That Suprising
posted on 28 Sep 2008Being very impressed with Kruger's script for ARLINGTON ROAD Iwas hoping to get something smart with this movie. That it wasn't.It was still very enjoyable but unlike ROAD that was so involvingbecause the tone of it was so real, this is a funny movie from thebeginning with Ben Afleck wisecracking all over the place.The acting is good, casting great, writing clever, cameraworkexpensive, editing cool but never was I really surprised, never wasthere a plot twist I didn't think of before it happened. And the finalending is the same as SCREAM 3, a writer's trick and not a logicalconclusion.All in all, a good thriller with some original touches, but notsomething to really remember.
Old pro meets young schmoe
posted on 22 Sep 2008It's nice to see the seventy-year-old John Frankenheimer back in the saddle again, making big movies with the big stars of the moment. It's sad to see that the scripts he's forced to work with are as bad as the low points of his seventies and eighties hack jobs. Ehren Kruger, the author of REINDEER GAMES, was handed SCREAM 3 by Miramax, and it's easy to see why: REINDEER mooshes together RESERVOIR DOGS, CON AIR, CASINO and a handful of other "influences," and ratchets up the twist-o-meter to the point of psychotic implausibility. It's the kind of through-the-duck-press script in which a bad guy hands the hero a Santa suit as a disguise for a big robbery. The accompanying dialogue? Guess. "Tis the season...convict!"The premise is that a good-guy car thief (Ben Affleck) is about to get out of prison. His cellmate is due to get sprung the same day. (How's that? Never mind.) The cellmate has been carrying on a correspondence with a girl who just loves convicts--and she happens to look like the South African supermodel Charlize Theron. (Are we supposed to...forget it.) The cellmate gets a shiv in the ribs, Affleck gets released, and, sure enough, he runs up to Theron and pretends to be the cellmate. If you haven't been turned off by the dialogue of the two white cellmates, which resembles that of two upwardly mobile college guys sharing Jagermeister shots at a TGI Friday's, then you have an opportunity to be repulsed by Gary Sinise as the bad guy, Theron's truck-driver brother. Sinise once had a reputation as an actor's actor. He has become the Anthony Zerbe of the millennium--and now, with this movie, Charlize Theron has become its Elke Sommer.That leaves us with Frankenheimer, whose compositions are so beautiful and bulbous, so heavy on portentous closeups and so light on the Tony Scottish, prettified lighting of contemporary action movies, that he seems to have raised the bar permanently on this sort of genre material with RONIN and his work here. I can't praise his work with actors (even stalwarts like Clarence Williams III and Danny Trejo annoy) and he doesn't make the script look one jot less noisome than it is. But he knows how to compose and cut this stuff in a way that makes the Renny Harlins and John McTiernans of this world look like drooling idiot man-children. Students of Frankenheimer's craft will be pleased by his work here (especially at the climax); the casual moviegoer will want to box Ehren Kruger's ears.
its amazing how bad action is
posted on 06 Sep 2008don't even bother with this pile of trash. this is one horrible movie, and its bad that affleck did it because he has done very good movies in the past. this script is weak, the acting is weak, the story is weak, everything is horrible, I couldn't stand it, nothing about it stood out as a good movie. I really don't understand how ANYONE could like this movie, it wasn't even bad to the point that it was funny. seriously, don't even rent this movie, its a waste of time and money. i give it a 1.
I can't believe this is from the director of The Manchurian Candidate!
posted on 21 Aug 2008It's a movie full of twists and turns which gets worse at every twist and turn. It's sad that John Frankenheimer, who directed the brilliant movie The Manchurian Candidate, ended his career with this trash.In it, Nick and Rudy are in prison about to be released. Nick has a girlfriend named Ashley who he has never actually met. Before the release, there is a fight and Nick appears to die. Rudy meets Ashley upon getting out of prison... and claims to be Nick. He begins an affair with the girl, which seems to disturb him slightly. This might not be the greatest of story lines, but it was interesting and there were Christmas references thrown in that were enjoyable. It would have been interesting to see Rudy struggle with his conscience and how Ashley would have reacted to the truth. But then comes the first twist: Ashley's "brother" Gabriel arrives with a plot to rob a native casino, and he forces Ashley and Nick to become part of the plot. This, while no masterpiece, could have been an okay B-movie. But there are still more tedious twists and turns: Ashley and Gabriel are lovers instead of siblings, Ashley was in charge of the plot to rob the casino, etc. And it comes to an ending- with Nick still being alive and the brains behind the whole operation- which is completely unrealistic. Poor performances to boot.
Top-Flight Frankenheimer Fare
posted on 18 Aug 2009Anybody that enjoyed "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) Quentin Tarantino's bloody, bullet-riddled heist caper, should have no qualms about watching veteran director John Frankenheimer's hard-boiled crime thriller "Reindeer Games" with Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron, and Gary Sinise.This outlandish but entertaining Tarantinoesque slay ride about mistaken identities, double-crosses galore, machine-gun toting Santa Clauses, and a botched casino robbery at Christmas flaunts a quality cast, an audacious script, and some riveting, white-knuckled suspense scenes.Affleck makes a strong, charismatic hero in his first tough guy actioneer as he matches wits, fists, and guns with sinister Gary Sinise. While heavily-armed, trash-talking, macho males dominate this testosterone-soaked saga, Charlize Theron takes top acting honors as a manipulative, man-eating temptress.Scenarist Ehren Kruger, who penned "Arlington Road" and "Scream 3," has written a lively but literate, tongue-in-check melodrama with about as many endings as the 1998 Denise Richards romp "Wild Things" with Matt Dillon.Auto thief Rudy Duncan (Ben Affleck of "Chasing Amy") and his cellmate, Nick (James Frain), have 48-hours left to serve in Michigan's austere Iron Mountain Prison. Rudy has grown weary of listening to Nick read him letters from a woman who has become his pen pal. No matter how often Rudy warns him about strange women, Nick plans to hook up with this dame after he gets out.Everything is going swell for them when a riot erupts in the prison cafeteria over a roach-infested gelatin dessert. A vengeful inmate, just out-of-solitary packing a grudge and a shiv for Rudy, tries to carve up our protagonist during the chaos, but Nick takes the knife for his friend and appears to die in his arms.As Rudy leave prison, he spots Ashley Mercer (sexy Charlize Theron of "Monster"), the girl Nick had worshipped in his letters, and decides to take advantage of her ignorance. Nick never sent her his photo, so Ashley believes Rudy when he takes over Nick's identity. Rudy enjoys a bang-up, one-night orgy until Ashley's low-life brother, Gabriel (Gary Sinise of "Mission to Mars"), a violent, unhinged, trucker who sells contraband guns, spoils their fun.No matter how much he protests that he isn't Nick, Rudy cannot convince Gabriel and his trigger-happy thugs that they have made a mistake. Ashley warns Rudy that her brother won't hesitate to kill him if he suspects treachery.Reluctantly, Rudy assures Gabriel that he is really Nick, only to learn that Gabriel wants to knock over the casino where Nick worked before he went up to serve time. Meanwhile, former Las Vegas casino operator Jack Bangs (Dennis Farina of "Manhunter") is having trouble attracting gamblers to the Tomahawk, a casino owned by an Indian tribe. Gabriel plans the robbery for Christmas day, with Rudy providing crucial details about the guards, alarms, and security precautions.Legendary director John Frankenheimer, who helmed "Ronin," "Seconds," and "The Manchurian Candidate," never lets the action bog down in this nimble-minded thriller. Great action movies paint their heroes into a corner and try to bring the house down on them. "Reindeer Games," a first-rate, four-star action opus, piles on the pressure and never gives its wily protagonist a break until fade-out. Outside of his work with Kevin Smith, this ranks as Ben Affleck's best work.