Blu-ray, DVD Release: The Game

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Sept. 25, 2012
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion


The Game movie scene

Michael Douglas gets fed up with clowning around in The Game.

The 1997 thriller The Game is the second film by leading Hollywood filmmaker David Fincher (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) to receive a special makeover by Criterion, following his 2008 drama The Strange Case of Benjamin Button.

The film focuses on the enormously wealthy and emotionally remote investment banker Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas, Traffic), who receives a strange gift from his ne’er-do-well younger brother ( Sean Penn, Fair Game) on his forty-eighth birthday: a voucher for a game that, if he agrees to play it, will change his life.

That’s the high-concept basis for story, which kicks off a trip down a rabbit hole that proves to be puzzling, terrifying, dangerous and exhilarating for Nicholas (and the viewers that join him for his game). Compared to other fincher films, it most resembles Panic Room in that it frequently dazzles with visual thrillers for thrills’ sake.

Co-starring Deborah Kara Unger (Shake Hands With the Devil) as the young lovely who’s thrown together with Nicholas as his game intensifies, The Game was released two years after the outstanding Se7en, and it further demonstrated that David Fincher was one of Hollywood’s true contemporary talents.

The Blu-ray and DVD editions of The Game contain the following features:

· New, restored digital transfer, supervised by director David Fincher and director of photography Harris Savides, with original theatrical 5.1 surround theatrical soundtrack, in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition
· Alternate 5.1 surround mix optimized for home theater viewing, supervised by sound designer Ren Klyce and Fincher, in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition
· Audio commentary by Fincher, Savides, actor Michael Douglas, screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris, digital animation supervisor Richard “Dr.” Baily, production designer Jeffrey Beecroft, visual effects supervisor Kevin Haug, and visual effects producer Robyn D’Arcy
· An hour’s worth of exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and film-to-storyboard comparisons for four of the film’s major set pieces, with commentary
· Alternate ending
· Trailer and teaser trailer, with commentary
· A booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Sterritt

 

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.