Bullet Points: Reindeer Games

Ben Affleck has been pretty busy lately cheating on his wife, which I would assume is part of him “getting into the character of Bruce Wayne”. It only makes sense for him to be banging random ladies in order to appear like the millionaire playboy and not some vigilante crazy person. Based on the US Weekly magazine that I routinely steal from my neighbor, it appears that his wife doesn’t understand how “method” he’s gone for his role as Batman and keeps trying to divorce him. My question to her is did you not see Reindeer Games? One viewing of that and you’ll have plenty of reasons to divorce that douche.

The Gist: Rudy Duncan has spent the past several years in prison for boosting cars and for the last 6 months he’s had to listen to his cellmate dish about his super hot pen pal that he’ll be meeting up with for the first time. One cafeteria stabbing later and Rudy finds himself being released from prison sans cellmate and upon seeing that lonely pen pal’s lady lumps, Rudy decides to play pretend and get a piece of ass before he ends up back in prison or working as a bus boy at a restaurant. Instead of spending the next few days in a sexual euphoria, he instead finds himself in the middle of a casino robbery with only one way out; a reindeer. Wait a second, there aren’t any reindeer in this movie? Aw hell…

The Cast: Ben Affleck does not play a likable character. From his soft pomade prison look to the way he just runs off and bangs his buddy Nick’s lady, he really succeeds in building a terribly undesirable character. I suppose the audience is should care about him but I couldn’t help but wish for him to be taken out by Danny Trejo and Gary Sinise. Charlize Theron plays the pen pal who apparently likes to meet men who are serving time for murder. While that seems to be poor decision making (try match.com dumbass) her skills of manipulation are on point.

Theron has made some truly incredible transformations during her career. 

The Villain: Besides the fact that we get the great Danny Trejo as one of the henchmen, Gary Sinise plays an angrier version of Lt. Dan looking even more psychotic and hamming it up pretty good. He is unbelievably inept for a guy planning to rob a casino but he makes up for it by being Gary Sinise. I almost got an opportunity to meet Gary while he was on a USO tour but I had to be pulled away for some super secret badass mission that may or may not have been made into the film Zero Dark Thirty (nope). I respect the hell out of Sinise but his character here does so much stupid shit that he doesn’t deserve to come out on top. Sorry Gary.

Fake Ving Rhames, Lt. Dan, and Ben Affleck-Griswold.

The Action: If your plan is to rob a casino around Christmas time while dressed as Santa Claus then you clearly have a thin grasp on the realities of big time robberies. The pro wrestler in me does applaud you for your entertainment value but you need to read a book or check out wikipedia before you go out and do something stupid like that. As a group, Sinise and his boys had a grand total of 0 robberies under their belt so of course they decided to pop their cherry with a sizable casino. There were a couple of “chase” scenes in the film but they led to absolutely nothing. In one, Affleck gets away for a couple of minutes but they eventually catch up to him and he’s free to just keep trying to escape for the rest of the film. For an action film, Reindeer Games had a serious lack of good action scenes.

Santa NOOOOOO!

Take it Home: 

• There’s always Furious 13: Vin Diesel was supposed to be in the film but had far too many crazy demands for the producers to meet.
• Waaburgers and French Cries: Charlize Theron has said that this was her least favorite of her films but she took it cause she got to work with John Frankenheimer.
• Not very Batman-like: Ben Affleck got a concussion during the prison stabbing scene.

The Verdict: Unless you’re looking for another Christmas-themed action film you should probably skip this one. Instead of buying it on Amazon or whatever, just send $5 to Gary Sinise’s charity, then pretend you sat through and hour and 40 minutes of Ben Affleck boinking his friend’s girlfriend and then crying for your sympathy. You’ll get none of that from me Ben! Go hang out with Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg on some shit alley in Boston bozo!