October 20 - The Game

Today’s movie is a suspense thriller with a scene that happens on October 20. Watch it tonight and enjoy.

THE GAME                                

Nicholas van Orton is an investment banker. He is haunted by the fact that his father committed suicide on his 48^th birthday. Nicholas is divorced and estranged from his younger brother, Conrad. On his 48^th birthday Conrad gives him a card and tells Nicholas he has purchased Nicholas’s participation in  Consumer Recreation Service’s Game as a present. Nicholas goes to CRS, fills out many forms, but is later told his application has been rejected. When he goes home he finds a clown dummy in the driveway with a key in it’s mouth. Then his TV starts talking to him. At a restaurant a waitress, Christine spills drinks on him and after insulting Nicholas, is fired. Then he gets a note saying “ don’t let her get away.” Nicholas races after her and tries to tell her about the Game. Then a homeless man collapses and they ride in the ambulance with him, but end up in a deserted parking garage. They get in an elevator to ride out, but it does not work until Nicholas uses the key. The elevator stops, but they get out, set off an alarm and are chased by the cops. They go back to his office. The next day he goes to a hotel that has his American Express card. In ‘his’ room he finds signs of a wild party and photos that look like Christine in his briefcase, which he had lost the night before. In the briefcase he finds a gadget. His house has been vandalized with fluorescent paint. Conrad shows up, claiming to be on the run from CRS. They argue and Conrad flees. The cab Nicholas takes home instead crashes into the bay and it is only by using the gadget, which is the handle for the window that he escapes. He takes the police to the CRS office, but no one is there. He goes to Christine’s house. She works for CRS and they are shot at. He’s told all his accounts have been drained, then he’s drugged. He wakes up in a cemetery in Mexico. He returns to the US. On October 20, 1997 [1:41:38 to 2:02:55] Nicholas learns the guy who signed him up at CRS is a TV commercial actor. Nicholas forces the guy to get him into the CRS building. He sees Christine and pushes her to the roof at gunpoint and shots Conrad, whom he mistakenly thinks is a CRS security guard. Nicholas jumps off the roof … … and crashes into his own birthday party. Conrad is ok, it was part of the game. Conrad did it to get Nicholas to embrace life and not end up like their father. Nicholas follows Christine to have coffee at the airport on the way to her next assignment for CRS.

                   

Wow! A very unusual film. Sort of like The Sixth Sense in that after it’s over you want to go back and watch it again to see how much you missed or assumed.    

Date given in film at 1:58:57 on invitation

Screenplay - John Brancato and Michael Ferris

                                                                                                     

Producer - Ceán Chaffin and Steve Golin

                                                                              

Director - David Fincher   

                                   

Runtime – 2 hours 9 minutes                                 

Released - September 12, 1997                            

Starring –

Michael Douglas as Nicholas Van Orton

Sean Penn as Conrad Van Orton

Deborah Kara Unger as Christine

James Rebhorn as Jim Feingold

Peter Donat as Samuel Sutherland

Carroll Baker as Ilsa

Copyright by Ivan Walters in 2014.