A holiday-themed heist thriller released in 2000 that never found an audience, didn’t even make back its budget, and was savaged by both critics and one of its own stars, Reindeer Games has fallen largely into obscurity. Still, the star-powered oddity is due a re-evaluation, and that’s for two reasons: It’s strange enough that you have to see it to believe it, and it was helmed by legendary director John Frankenheimer. And one thing Frankenheimer has never done is phone it in.
Ben Affleck and Charlize Theron head up the film’s cast, with Affleck playing an ex-con named (yes) Rudy impersonating a man named (also, yes) Nick. There’s snow, ice and Santa suits aplenty amid the borderline nonsensical twists and gunfire, but the man who once directed The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May plays it straight all the way through. For the curious, the Christmas heist film no one really needed is now streaming on Paramount+, after long being only available as a rental — and it’s a lot more fun than you’d expect.
What Is ‘Reindeer Games’ About?
Written by Hollywood veteran Ehren Kruger, whose credits run the gamut from several Transformers films to Top Gun Maverick, the story for Reindeer Games seems almost deliberately hard to follow. To keep things simple: Affleck plays Rudy, an ex-con who, upon his release from prison, impersonates his dead cellmate Nick and shacks up with Ashley (Theron), the dead man’s pen pal girlfriend, who has never met him in real life. Ashley’s got a brother, though, played by a terrifically villainous Gary Sinise, and he wants “Nick” to help him rob a casino, run by the incomparable Dennis Farina.
A series of double and triple-crosses follow, as well as a shootout on a frozen lake, a sex scene between Affleck and Theron that reportedly had to be cut to get an R-rating, and eventually, for some reason, everyone ends up wearing Santa suits. The film is also packed to the gills with brief appearances by actors like Danny Trejo, Isaac Hayes, and even Ron Jeremy. It’s frankly a mess that works best if you let it just wash over you — and likely wash it down with a few cocktails.
Theron herself even admitted in a later interview that the whole thing was a bit of a disaster, saying: “That was a bad, bad, bad movie. But even though the movie might suck, I got to work with John Frankenheimer. I wasn’t lying to myself — that’s why I did it. I mean, he directed The Manchurian Candidate, which is like the movie of all movies. Fuck regret. Just fuck it.”
Is ‘Reindeer Games’ Still Worth Watching?
That’s a hard question to answer but, depending on your tolerance for lackadaisical performances and nonsense plotting, it could well be yes. Frankenheimer brought the world The Manchurian Candidate and the action-thriller classic Ronin, which features one of the greatest car chases of all time, and he doesn’t slouch behind the camera here, no matter how ridiculous the material. Reindeer Games clearly takes delight in its ludicrous number of plot twists, excessive violence, and groan-worthy Christmas references. And Frankenheimer manages to pack in some booming, bloody, and impactful gunplay that keeps things moving at a crisp pace. He also later admitted that he wanted the film to be even racier and more violent, having been made to cut over 20 minutes by the MPAA.
Notably, Frankenheimer was also unapologetic about the sheer number of twists in the film, later saying that he would have liked the story to have been even thornier. In an interview, he said: “Let’s get a reality check here. Today’s audience may not be confused by how fast a film like Reindeer Games moves, but the intellectual level of the person watching this movie is not nearly what it was for the person watching The Manchurian Candidate.”
Even in its compromised form and with its cringe-worthy holiday nods, Reindeer Games is the kind of nasty, unapologetic Hollywood failure we rarely get anymore.
