Cinematical

You're missing this much more positive review:

http://www.collider.com/entertainment/reviews/article.asp?aid=9603&tcid=1

Plus, you really can't trust some "loyal reader" of AICN to give us an "official opinion" on Game can you? It's the Crank guys, I know a lot of people who hated Crank, others who loved it... It's just what they do and "Sexy Whisk" sounds like one of the odd balls out.

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Don't trust much of the AICN early reviews these. That or I'm just too much of an optimist for GAME and CRANK 2.

CRANK is the most underrated action movie of all time. Yeah, I said that shit.

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I was at the Game screening Wednesday night, and I’m glad to see that Johnny Rico above cited the Collider.com review. While I don’t agree with everything said in the Collider review, it is a fair and thoughtful review of the movie we saw, unlike the reviewer at AICN, who didn’t demonstrate anything except his own ignorance (see his ridiculous comments concerning Maria Carey, Michael J. Fox, and Children of Men). It’s plain from the last paragraph of the AICN review that Sexy Whisk wants Neveldine and Taylor to make nothing but versions of Crank for the rest of their careers, and he’s complaining that that’s not what he got. Since they are indeed making Crank 2, it’s too bad he didn’t go to a screening of that, instead of publicly trashing something new and interesting from the directing duo.

Just for the record, I’m female, older than the movie’s supposed target audience, and a non-gamer for the most part. Personally, I loved Game! Even in it’s fairly rough state, I found it visually fascinating and highly entertaining. It certainly needs some work, but that’s exactly what these very early screenings are for. They’ve already got the movie to the point that it can be shown, and they don’t open until next summer, so they have lots of time to tweak and polish.

At this point, the story is a bit chaotic, mostly because the writer/directors are trying to cram a lot of ideas, story lines, action, and great visuals into a reasonable running time, and the movie sometimes seems to be bursting at the seams. It definitely needs tightening for clarity’s sake, and I feel for them, because I think they’re going to have to lose some stuff they love to do it. However, they have two scenes that just don’t work and I’d love to see gone. (I don’t mean to be mysterious here, but I’m trying to stay away from real spoilers.)

The most difficult problem they need to deal with is a distinct lack of character development. I realize this is not the kind of movie in which you’re going to have deep character development, but they don’t have enough here to make the movie work nearly as well as it could. They have a number of really interesting characters, but all of them except Kable are pretty one dimensional. The problem is that with so much going on and so many characters, nobody except the Kable character gets enough screen time to really register much with the audience. Even the Kable character needs some filling out so the audience can identify more with him. I’m really hoping that they have unused footage that can help with shaping the characters, because if they can build in a little more emotional connection with the audience, this movie would really kick ass!

Neveldine and Taylor are fortunate here to have Gerard Butler in the lead as Kable. Even with an under-developed character, he manages to anchor the movie through the sheer physicality and fierce presence he brings to the screen. In the midst of all the wildness, he manages to make Kable believable. No small feat here. Michael C. Hall appears to be having a great time hamming it up as Castle, the villian of the piece, but his nearly over-the-top performance actually works here. I also liked Logan Lerman as Simon, the teenage gamer who controls Kable. And I most definitely loved his video room!

The visuals, and the whole look of the movie, are terrific. I was particularly interested in seeing how Game looked because I kept hearing that the new RED camera system was going to revolutionize the look of movies shot in digital. Now I know what they’re talking about. I have not been a fan of the look of digital movies, at least up to now, but Game looks fabulous, much closer to the look of film and without that sterile digital look. If anyone is interested in a much more knowledgeable technical review of the visuals, you can find it in post #6 at:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=20824


I thought the action sequences were first rate, and I particularly liked that they went for more brutal realism and less of the completely ridiculous extremes in their action sequences. I also like the lack of tongue-in-cheek, wink-wink at the camera here. Frankly, I’m bored with that. There are indeed lots of funny moments in Game, but they’re better earned than just smirking at the camera. Kable is a serious badass, brutal and brutalized, and just out to stay alive and get back to his family, by any means necessary. I also thought Neveldine and Taylor did a great job of moving between ‘real’ action and parts that looked more like a first-person shooter game, all the while keeping Kable a real person to the audience.

There are lots and lots of things to like here, and I am really looking forward to seeing the finished product. It’s certainly not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, but those who love it are going to *really* love it. And the powers-that-be shouldn’t be too quick to think their only audience is young males. I saw it with 3 other women — one hated it, one the jury is still out on, one is cautiously optimistic, and I loved it. Three of us plan on seeing it again when it’s finished.

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