The first scene of Reindeer Games immediately made me forget about any talk of stalled release dates.  Any film that opens with an overhead shot of a dead, smoldering Santa will do that to you.  Of course, this means that the action has already taken place and that the entire film will be one big flashback, likely featuring a voice-over provided by the protagonist.  Anybody getting tired of this trend?  Did the MPAA pass a law that required at least one major theatrical release per week include the whole flashback/voice-over thing?  It was cool when Kevin Spacey did it in American Beauty, but come on.

The flashback reverts to six days earlier and the voice-over comes courtesy of Rudy Duncan (Ben Affleck, Boiler Room).  Rudy is a two-bit hoodlum three days away from his release from Iron Mountain Prison in Michigan, where he’s been locked up since his grand theft auto conviction.  His cellmate, Nick (James Frain, Hilary & Jackie), is also scheduled to be released on the same day.  All Rudy can think about is getting home in time for Christmas dinner to wolf down hot chocolate and pecan pie, while Nick drools over pictures and letters from his pen-pal sweetheart Ashley Mercer (Charlize Theron, The Cider House Rules).

Long story short, Rudy gets out of the clink, but Nick doesn’t.  Rudy pretends to be Nick so he can nail Ashley, who turns out to have a psychotic, gun-running brother named Gabriel (Gary Sinise, The Green Mile), who wants to use Rudy/Nick to pull of an Indian casino heist.  But it’s not easy to tell who is playing who as the story twists and turns into the film’s final reel.  The script was written by Ehren Kruger (Scream 3 and Arlington Road), so you almost have to expect somewhat of a surprise ending.

In addition to several plot holes wider than Bill Bradley’s neck, Krueger’s script also includes a handful of jokes about Native Americans.  I don’t have a problem with that kind of humor, as long as it’s funny (which it is here), but I couldn’t help wondering how they would have gone over if they had been told to an opportunistic magazine reporter by a relief pitcher.  And speaking of race, could they have cast a more ethnically diverse trio of hoodlums to support Gabriel?  There’s the black guy (Clarence Williams III, The General’s Daughter), the Latino guy (Danny Trejo, ConAir) and the white guy (Donal Logue, Runaway Bride).

On the plus side, Affleck shows that he is one damn charismatic actor.  Whether he’s taking a punch in the gut or a dart in the chest, his reactions are some of the most realistic I’ve seen.  He can scream and gasp for air with the best of them.  The bad thing is that he’s totally unbelievable as a convict.  Hammy, perhaps, but Affleck really made the film tolerable.  Sinise does well chewing up scenery as the bad guy, but I just heard him crowing in a television interview that he came up with the “look” for his character all on his own.  Wow – I’m pretty sure that’s he’s the first bad guy to have a goatee, long hair, a leather jacket and an earring.

Seventy-year-old director John Frankenheimer doesn’t quite match his previous effort (Ronin) but doesn’t really come close to recreating his all-time low (The Island of Dr. Moreau), either.  Even though Frankenheimer has produced some of the finest car-chase scenes ever captured on film and Affleck’s character plays an auto thief, there are no road hijinks in Games.  Even so, at seventy, Frankeheimer shows he can still make a pretty decent action flick.

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