Reindeer Games

Reviewed by: Jack Vincennes

September 10,2000

Return

Imagine Paul Reubens playing Sam Spade and you come close to Ben Affleck as a hardened car thief (yes, because our hero, though a criminal, must not be a real criminal, he must be a car thief, like Nicolas Cage in Gone in 60 Seconds or the redheaded guy from NYPD Blue in the other Nicolas Cage movie) who comes out of prison pretending to be his ex-cell mate (jabbed, I kid you not, by Dana Stubblefield of the Washington Redskins) so he can score with his ex-cell mate's pen pal, a hot blonde played by Cahrlize Theron, because all criminals get hot blonde pen pals who wait for them outside the prison gates and then take them to a motel and screw them silly, and all of these pen pal women are Charlize Theron hot too. It's true.

So, then Theron's scraggly, scummy brother (Gary Sinise) and his crew arrive and they want Affleck to help them rob a casino where Affleck used to work, except that Affleck didn't work there, his ex-cell mate did, and so, of course, you see the problem.

Nice pool scene with a naked Theron. Otherwise, plodding, stupid and nouveau violent (slo-mo, big holes in people, and snappy one-liners simultaneously).