Reindeer Games (2000)

And so the Christmas season is upon us. Well, it’s been upon us for about 2 months now, but I refuse to engage in Christmas activities before Thanksgiving. Come on people! Let’s not forget about the other holidays. Jeeez. Anyway, I will be doing another month of holiday related flick reviews, so if you know of any great action Christmas movies, send them my way. I am starting off the month with a review of Reindeer Games. This is an odd, kinda boring movie. Actually, it is the perfect movie for the kids…if you’re ready to pee on their innocence and show them the true ways of the world. Oh yeah, and kill their sweet little ideas of Santa Claus.

Reindeer Games is about a guy (Ben Affleck), who gets out of prison, poses as his cell mate (James Frain), boinks guy’s girlfriend (Charlize Theron), and gets tricked into robbing a casino by Theron’s “brother”, who turns out to be Theron’s boyfriend. Theron, in the end, turns out to be hooked up with the cell mate, who was thought to be dead, and it was all a big fat trick. There was more side switching going on than the new Heroes episodes. Who am I kidding? Nothing has more side switching than Heroes. PICK A SIDE ALREADY!! Freakin’ nursery school… “Ohh, I can’t decide if I’m good or bad, what shall I do? Lemme start slicing heads until I make up my mind.” Freakin’ grow a pair, do the “You are not it” rhyme, and pick.

Ummm, anyway, back to Reindeer Games. The guys dress up in Santa Claus suits and rob a casino. Now, this might sound awesome, but don’t be fooled. It was very blah. The whole movie was more about the side switching than the action. One plus about the movie is all the recognizable faces in it. For example, Ashton Kutcher made a very, very brief appearance. So brief, that you have to rewind and say, “Is that who I think that is?” Overall, it was an all right movie. There are so many twists that you never know who is screwin’ whom. I will give it that, right when you think you know what’s going on, they throw in another squirrel. Ultimately, Reindeer Games is about the story, not the action.

Amount of time until action: ~10 minutes

Bad guys: Who the heck knows, or cares.

Best Line: “You want to hear about some job of mine, I want to see some GD hot chocolate…and some pe-can freakin’ pie!” (Affleck negotiating with the gangsters)

Best Kill: There are not a whole lot of interesting kills in this movie. Actually, there are not a whole lot of kills, period. Before robbing the casino, the gangsters give Affleck a water gun. They all enjoy a laugh at his expense. On the way to the casino, one guy offers Affleck some rum and he fills the gun with it. Later, Affleck is facing off with one of the gangsters. Affleck pulls his gun and you can see the rum dripping out of it. The gangster laughs at him and pulls out a cigarette. As he lights it, Affleck squirts the rum on the flame and sets the whole gangster on fire. Then the gangster freaks out, and falls out a window. A flaming Santa Claus comes crashing down from two stories up onto a parked car. Flaming Santa Claus…priceless.

Best Explosion: Affleck is trying to escape from…everyone. He gets put into a car, they set it on fire and are about to push it off a cliff. Affleck hot wires the car just in time, rams it into Theron, and drives it off the cliff, jumping out just in time. It falls to the bottom and explodes something fierce.

Rating: 1 Flaming Santa, out of 5