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Verdict: When it's good, it's very good. But when it's bad...

Details: Starring Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron and Gary Sinise. Directed by John Frankenheimer. Rated R for sex, violence, nudity and profanity. 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: OK, 'fess up. Who messed with John Frankenheimer's new film, "Reindeer Games"?

Was it the star, Ben Affleck, who sensed that his fans needed a little more action heroics from him? Was it the producer, Bob Weinstein (Harvey's brother), who decided that if you've got Affleck in your movie, then you need some chases, fights and explosions?

Was it Frankenheimer himself, a multiple Emmy winner ("Andersonville") and legendary film director ("The Manchurian Candidate"), who figured that, when you have a four-picture deal, why not go with the flow?

Whoever the culprit is, he or she has taken a tart, twisty little movie and pumped it up into something that's watchable but sometimes quite ludicrous. Along with the aforementioned ballistics, there are too many scenes in which the villain blusters just long enough to forget to kill our hero (you know, like they do in the James Bond movies).

The less you know about the plot, the better time you'll have. The opening sequence — a montage of dead Santa Clauses — is pure mordant Frankenheimer. Then comes the credit, "6 days before..."

That's the day, apparently, when Rudy (Affleck) gets discharged from prison after serving five years for grand auto theft. For reasons that will go unexplained (the less you know...), Rudy walks out the gates and spies the babelicious Ashley (Charlize Theron), who's been sending his cell mate provocative letters and pouty pictures. For reasons that hardly need to be explained, Rudy decides to pose as the prison pen pal she's never met.

So far, so good. Then her psycho brother Gabriel (Gary Sinise) shows up, demanding that Rudy help him rob a casino where he (that is, the cell mate) was once a security guard. From there, it's just a matter of schemes and counterschemes. Oh, and those dead Santas.

It's intriguing to watch Affleck stay one step ahead of Sinise and typically one step behind Theron. But somehow the two stars seem too glossy for their roles. Affleck does OK with the action stuff and the wrong-man stuff, but he fails to find the unscrupulous survival instinct that keeps his character alive.

Theron, handed a juicy femme fatale role, seems afraid of alienating the audience; she lacks the Barbara Stanwyck/Linda Fiorentino art of seducing us with her duplicitousness. Basically, she doesn't have enough fun being a bad girl.

Sinise, however, in his long hair and scuzzball goatee, is having a blast. He struts and sneers and rants and throws tantrums and pretty much steals the movie. Even the parts not worth taking.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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