John Frankenheimer who directed so many fine films especially with Burt Lancaster in the Sixties ended his big screen career with Reindeer Games in the year of the millenia. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan has not been the location of too many motion pictures, except perhaps for Anatomy Of A Murder previously. And that was forty one years before Reindeer Games premiered.

It's a heist drama which stars Ben Affleck as a newly paroled con from Iron Mountain prison who hijacked a few cars back in the day. Two days before his release Affleck's friend James Frain who was also to be released gets himself shanked in prison. Frain has been writing to this girl on the outside played by Charlize Theron and Affleck who has the same needs that other newly released prisoners have sees an opportunity for satisfaction of same with Therone if he poses as Frain for a bit.

But before that happens Theron's brother Gary Sinise breaks up the happy party with two of his fellow truckers, Clarence Williams, III, and Danny Trejo. They wanted Frain to be the inside man on a job robbing a casino on Christmas Eve, a night that is notoriously slow in gambling houses. In fact the gambling house they want to rob is an Indian run casino called the Tomahawk which someone had the bright idea would boost tourism in that thinly populated region of the Upper Peninsula and the Tomahawk is not taking too many gambling scalps on a good night.

To keep himself alive Affleck's got to string everyone along. But the film is loaded with some really nice twists in the end. And Theron isn't quite the airhead she first appears to be.

The three hoods, Sinise, Trejo, and Williams are a really sinister trio who'd soon murder Affleck because they don't like his looks. He has to keep one step ahead of them mentally. Sinise especially is one scary dude. There is also a nice performance from Dennis Farina who plays a Las Vegas high roller who can't make a go of managing the Tomahawk and just wants to go back to Vegas.

There's lots of action in Reindeer Games with some interesting character development and plot twists that would be worthy of Hitchcock. Reindeer Games was a fine film for John Frankenheimer to end his big screen career with and I think you'll agree if you see Reindeer Games.

REINDEER GAMES is one of those films I hate which try way too hard to be clever. As a 'thriller', it attempts to confound the audience by throwing in a major twist ever ten or fifteen minutes or so, totally twisting the story upon its head in an effort to be one step ahead. It doesn't work. The storyline just ends up being preposterous, unbelievable, you name it...and, in the end, this would have worked a lot better as a tension-fuelled heist movie, something like DOG DAY AFTERNOON.

So, with an awful script sapping life from the viewer, what IS worth watching? John Frankenheimer's direction, for one. Frankenheimer, who directed the superlative RONIN as well as many other great flicks over the years, is way too good for this material. His direction is solid, as usual, with plenty of stylistic flourishes and well-handled moments of both suspense and action. It's very sad that this was his last completed work, as he deserves much better material than this.

The cast, too, is better than you'd expect than in a failure of this type. Okay, so we're saddled with a typically bland Ben Affleck as the lead – his only good scene is when he's having darts chucked at him, which I'm convinced was done for real – and the equally uninteresting Charlie Theron, complete with a gratuitous topless scene, as his love interest. Further down the line, the cast gets more interesting. Gary Sinise is one of my favourite underrated villains, and as the bad guy here he's impossible to dislike: a rough, tough street-level crim with aspirations to make it big. You can't fault him. Then there are lots of familiar faces, seemingly stuck playing henchmen or prisoners: Isaac Hayes has a memorable cameo, Ron Jeremy is a prisoner, Donal Logue a lunk-headed thug, Dennis Farina a casino boss, Ashton Kutcher credited as 'college kid', and the ever-great Danny Trejo criminally underused as one of the bad guys.

In the end, though, the ludicrousness saps this one dry, even if there are one or two half-decent suspense sequences along the way. Unfortunately, as in his other film PAYCHECK, Affleck is too bland and smarmy an actor to generate one ounce of empathy in the viewers, making this another forgettable attempt at something big.

Rudy Duncan (Ben Affleck) is doing 6 years for grand theft auto. He and his cell mate Nick (James Frain) are closing in on parole in a few days. A new arrival in prison thinks Rudy rat him out. Before he could get Rudy, he kills Nick instead. When Rudy gets out, he decides to impersonate Nick to get with his romantic pen pal Ashley (Charlize Theron) who Nick talks incessantly about. Then her brother Gabriel (Gary Sinise) forces him into the gang to rob a casino.

This is closing in on the end of director John Frankenheimer's career. He just doesn't have it anymore. Time has passed him by. The movie drags along for the longest time. It's extremely tiring to see boyish Ben trying real hard to look like a hardened ex-con. All the close up camera work is some kind of desperate attempt at artistic flare. The fact is that I am annoyed by Affleck in this movie and couldn't care less about the character.

The movie was within salvageable range with the gun fight action. The loud bangs could have drowned out the movie's troubles. Then it goes completely off the rails with an unreasonable twist. There isn't any point to anything by then. It becomes a giant mess.