Remember back when Ben Affleck was pretty much doing every half-assed movie offered to him to the point where his very presence became synonymous with both “tedium” and “overexposure” and he had to disappear for a while before re-emerging as a (rather good) film director? Reindeer Games is one of those movies. Actually, you can’t blame ol’ Ben for wanting to do this one — he got to work with director John Frankenheimer (this ended up being his final film), the twists and turns in Ehren Kruger’s ridiculous script probably at least read well on paper and he got to romp around naked with Charlize Theron in a rousing session of just-got-out-of-prison sex. All plusses in pre-production, though unfortunately this heist-gone-wrong thriller ended up being just too absurd to even qualify as a guilty pleasure, with Affleck as an ex-con getting roped into a holiday casino heist by psycho Gary Sinise and his idiot criminal pals. With so much talent both behind and in front of the camera, it’s truly a marvel (or is it a Christmas miracle?) that this thing ended up being so stupid and incompetent.
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