Reindeer Games
Snow Job
The “guilty pleasure” movie exists in the netherworld between good movies and bad movies. Just about everyone knows what a good movie is and what it looks like, and just about everyone understands that some movies are so bad they have no redeeming qualities. But there’s a lot in the middle.
A guilty pleasure movie is a bad movie, let’s stipulate that right up front. (Let’s get something else straight, too, Jackie Chan movies are NOT guilty pleasures, they’re too good — excepting production values and dubbing — for that label.) But it’s a bad movie that, arguably, has enough good qualities — be they what they may — that make the movie enjoyable. Even the worst movies — Ed Wood’s name springs to mind — have their fans and partisans who can see these good qualities. Still, though, you know it’s a bad movie — and you feel bad about liking it — but you do anyway.
You’ve probably had this conversation with people;
“Love in the Monkey House was a horrible, awful movie. I don’t know why anyone would want to watch it, the acting was terrible and the plot didn’t make any sense.”
“I liked it.”
“You did? What did you like about it?”
“I don’t know. I just liked it. It was entertaining to me.”
“But… I mean… didn’t you… don’t you… why?”
“I just liked it, OK?”
Reindeer Games is like that, for me, anyway. I know that it’s a bad movie. I know that it has way too much scenery-chewing and a ridiculous plot. I know the ending is just wretched, and the final scenes are just too goofy to even write about. I know all of these things, but I still liked it. OK?
Mostly, I liked seeing Ben Affleck talk himself out of trouble.
Ben is shaping up to be a great movie talker, as anyone who saw him in Boiler Room knows. He needs to be in a David Mamet movie, and quick. Here’s he’s trying to talk his way out of a horrible jam, where a gang of demented truck drivers think he’s an ex-con who knows the security system of a small Michigan tribal casino.
Ben is sitting in a truck stop, with the truck drivers all around him in the booth. He’s finishing off the last of his long hoped-for pecan pie, in a funny scene where he insists on eating every last crumb. Finally, head bad guy Gary Sinise hands Ben a map of the casino, crudely drawn on notebook paper. Ben — who knows nothing about the casino, we’re told — sees a way out. They’ve remodeled the casino, he tells his captors. See, this over here used to be the pancake bar; now it’s a roulette table, he says, sorry, I can’t help you.
That’s a nice moment. Another example; during the actual bank robbery, one of the truckers — dressed up as Santa Claus, of course — angrily turns to Affleck; one of the pieces of advice he has given has gone totally wrong. Affleck just shrugs, winks, and grins. Sorry, pal.
Dennis Farina has a small role in the movie as the casino boss, and what a pleasure it is to see him. Farina had the main bad-guy role in one of my favorite all-time guilty pleasure movies, Midnight Run, (”Is this moron number one? Put moron number two on the phone.”) and has livened up all sorts of crime films from Out of Sight to Get Shorty. Farina’s all-to-brief part helps increase the guilty-pleasure quotient immeasurably.
Two of my other favorite actors are here, too, they just don’t do as well. Gary Sinise is the head bad guy, and he’s got a great scene where he throws darts at Affleck. But that’s about it. Sinise ought to be past the point in his career where he’s playing scruffy bad guys; he deserves to be where Kevin Spacey is now. Charlize Theron is in an odd part; it appears that her character is a better actress than she is. It’s almost as if they didn’t give her the entire script to read. She’s at the center of a lot of the stupid double-crosses at the end of the movie, but she never gives anything away that the script doesn’t specifically tell her to do. She is, however, still a babe.
This is very little for you to go on, I know. More than likely, you won’t like Reindeer Games one little bit. It’s got a stupid, overly convoluted plot, with about three more twists than it needs. It is overly cliched, with way too much of the exposition being delivered by people who have a gun to Affleck’s head. The soundtrack contains just too many bad holiday classics to be believed. The directing is nothing special; we expect more from John Frankenheimer, who brought us The Manchurian Candidate. Affleck and Theron even fall into a frozen lake in December in Michigan without getting frostbite.
All of this is true. All of this is accurate. All of this should keep you from renting this movie. And I have only one thing to say in response:
I just liked it, OK?