REINDEER GAMES
Ben Affleck plays Rudy Duncan, a car thief finishing up his term in Iron
Mountain Prison, Michigan, for manslaughter after a botched car theft. He
and his cellmate Nick (James Frain) are both about to be released, and Nick
is very excited about finally meeting Ashley (Theron), with whom he has
been exchanging letters for 6 months. He found Ashley through a magazine
ad and has never seen her in person, but their cell is plastered with her
photos, and Rudy has not failed to notice how attractive she is. When Nick
is killed in a prison riot stemming from the cockroach incident, Rudy decides
to adopt Nick's identity, at least until he can make it a few times with
Ashley. But soon after their meeting, he is visited by her brother Gabriel
(Sinise), who wants his help robbing an Indian casino called The Tomahawk.
You see, the real Nick used to work there, and he has told Ashley in his
letters that the place would be easy to knock over on Christmas Eve because
the staff is short and the security lax.
Rudy tells Gabriel that he's not Nick. Then Gabriel threatens to kill
him, so he tells him that he is Nick. Then it turns out he doesn't
really know anything about The Tomahawk, so he tries again to admit he's
not Nick. Then Gabriel threatens him again, so . . . this is the
kind of brilliant scriptwriting we see throughout the film, folks. After
an excruciatingly stupid series of events which result in a half dozen dead
Santas, then it's time to settle in for the multiple-twist ending. If one
weren't already gaping at the screen from the sheer idiocy of all that precedes
it, Ehren's convoluted finale might actually be forgivable. But by the time
it rolls around, we have long since lost any hope of suspending our indignant
disbelief, and it's clear that at some point in the process, Frankenheimer
just stopped caring.
As the story goes on, we are continually forced to swallow the changes in character of people we thought we knew. Theron's character, especially, reinvents herself about every 20 minutes, and she seems at a loss as to how to achieve any semblance of credibility. People believe the lies of others when it serves to further the storyline, and then stop believing when it's necessary for the same purpose. And as this anemic story wends its way from one credibility gap to another, our three leads try desperately to act as if any of this stuff could actually happen. A valiant effort, but a failure nonetheless. *½