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Product Description ------------------- Successful San Francisco tycoon and control freak Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) approaches his forty-eighth birthday with some trepidation. For it was at this age that his her fell from his mansion roof and died. Nicholas receives an introduction to Consumer Recreation Services from his younger brother, Conrad (Sean Penn), and is informed that he is now playing 'The Game'. Nicholas soon finds himself losing control and threatened with the loss of not just his company and fortune but also his life. .co.uk Review ------------- It's not quite as clever as it tries to be, but The Game does a tremendous job of presenting the story of a rigid control freak trapped in circumstances that are increasingly beyond his control. Michael Douglas plays a rich, divorced, and dreadful investment banker whose 48th birthday reminds him of his her's suicide at the same age. He's locked in the cage of his own misery until his rebellious younger brother (Sean Penn) presents him with a birthday invitation to play "The Game" (described as "an experiential Book of the Month Club")--a mysterious offering from a company called Consumer Recreation Services. Before he knows the game has even be, Douglas is caught up in a series of unexplained events designed to strip him of his tenuous security and cast him into a maelstrom of chaos. How do you play a game that hasn't any rules? That's what Douglas has to figure out, and he can't always rely on his intelligence to form logic out of what's happening to him. Seemingly cast as the fall guy in a conspiracy thriller, he encounters a waitress (Deborah Unger) who may or may not be trustworthy, and nothing can be taken at face value in a world turned upside down. Douglas is great at conveying the sheer panic of his character's dilemma, and despite some lapses in credibility and an anticlimactic ending, The Game remains a thinking person's thriller that grabs and holds your attention. Thematic resonance abounds between this and Seven and Fight Club, two of the other films by The Game 's director David Fincher. -- Jeff Shannon, .com