Bullet Points: Surviving the Game

If you are financing a movie one of the least dangerous investments you can make is in a movie based on the 1924 short story, The Most Dangerous Game.

There have been numerous films that have borrowed The Most Dangerous Game formula… 1982’s Turkey Shoot, 1986’s Deadly Prey and Avenging Force, 1993’s Hard Target and many more, including the subject of this edition of Bullet Points, 1994’s Surviving the Game…

• Hard Knock Life: Jack Mason (Ice-T, Stealth Fighter) is a homeless man living on the streets of Seattle. Mason living that empty belly life and rotten, smelly life spends his days looking through dumpsters and garbage cans for his next meal. If that isn’t bad enough… Mason’s dog gets run over by a taxi and his homeless friend Hank (Jeff Corey, Messenger of Death) dies. Jack Mason has had enough of his full of sorrow life and he is prepared to end it all, that’s when Walter Cole (Charles S. Dutton), a “Good Samaritan” from a local mission, steps in and offers Mason a unique job opportunity.
• Job Interview: Cole handed Mason a card and instructed him to go meet with his business partner Thomas Burns (Rutger Hauer, Blind Fury) to discuss a job as a survival guide for their next excursion into the Pacific Northwest wilderness. After some vetting by Burns, Mason gets the gig and it isn’t long before he’s meeting the wealthy clients that he’ll be “guiding”.

• Cabin in the Woods: The night before the hunt, Mason partakes in a pig roast with Burns, Cole and their clients… there’s CIA psychiatrist Doc Hawkins (Gary Busey, Eye of the Tiger), asthmatic Texan John Griffin (John C. McGinley, Point Break) and the father and son duo of Derek Wolfe Sr. and Derek Wolfe Jr. played by F. Murray Abraham and William McNamara respectively. It doesn’t end up being the most pleasant dinner with Griffin flipping out on Mason and Doc Hawkins sharing a terrifying childhood dog story. But compared to what is to come the next morning, the dinner was actually a walk in the park.
• The Hunted: Mason finds out that he’s not going to be the guide for the hunters, he is going to be the prey! They give him a head start while they eat some breakfast… which isn’t as fair as it seems considering Mason is on foot and they have ATVs. But Mason actually manages to do what no other victim of this sick group of hunters ever did, he avoids his hunters’ first attempt at killing him and doubles back to the cabin, hoping to find a weapon of his own… what he ends up finding is a “trophy room” filled with heads of the previous victims and an empty jar with his name on it! Burns, possibly putting himself in Mason’s shoes for a moment, figures he may have actually gone back to the cabin, so they haul ass to see if they can catch him there. When Mason here’s them coming he sets a trap by setting the cabin on fire and ends up going one on one with Doc Hawkins… when their encounter is over, the odds are a little less stacked against Mason.

• Texas Born, Texas Bred: The next guy to try to take out Mason on his own is John Griffin… but Mason opts to tie Griffin up in a cave he is holed up in for the night and doesn’t stoop to the level of his hunters and kill Griffin. It is here where we get the back stories on both Griffin and Mason. The next day when the rest of the hunting party has caught up with Griffin in the cave, Mason is already gone but Griffin wants out of the deal. Realizing that Mason could have easily killed him, he can no longer justify hunting Mason… but this violates the rules of the game, so Cole shoots Griffin in the head making him Texas dead. And then there were four…
• The Party’s Over: Even if you’ve never seen another movie inspired by The Most Dangerous Game, you can probably see where this is heading. Surviving the Game comes down to Mason and Burns as you might expect, but the journey to get there is filled with memorable moments and a couple of swerves to make you question if they really are going to go with the obvious conclusion or not.

Surviving the Game is likely the most star studded The Most Dangerous Game adaptation of all-time. But that star power did not help this film at the box office back in 1994 and honestly if not for my fellow Bulletproof Action contributors, I am not sure this movie would have even been a blip on my radar.

Not sure how this movie was completely lost on me but it was… what was not lost on me after watching Surviving the Game was how far Ice-T had come in a decade. In 1984, he was playing himself in Cannon’s Breakin’ movies and a decade later he was playing the part of action hero, surrounded by seasoned actors with name value, and more than holding his own.

Look how far we’ve come since this review began, we are already to the Bonus Bullet Points portion…

• Familiar Face: Bob Minor (Action Jackson and Commando) plays a security guard who harasses Mason and Hank in their quest for something to eat.
• If You Ever: …wanted to see Ice-T run on a treadmill, then Surviving the Game is the movie for you.
• In Too Deep Nobody’s face can convey that they are in over their head quite the way William McNamara’s can. McNamara deserve an award for Most Overwhelmed.
• If You Ever: …wanted to see Ice-T shoot down a tree, then Surviving the Game is the movie for you.