In his new memoir Born Standing Up, Steve Martin recalls that, back in the late ‘60s, he romanced the daughter of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, until the director John Frankenheimer stole her from him while filming Trumbo's script for The Fixer. After mentioning that, two decades later, the director tried to seduce Victoria Tennant at a time when she was Martin's wife, Martin notes that "Frankenheimer died a few years ago, but it was not I who killed him." Unlikely though it may seem, John Frankenheimer actually did get a few movies directed when he wasn't concentrating on screwing with Steve Martin's love life. The 2000 Reindeer Games was his last film, and though not in the same league as his masterpiece The Manchurian Candidate, it's actually one of his live ones.
This thriller, from an original screenplay by plot-twist specialist Ehren Kruger, stars Ben Affleck as a prison inmate who's sort of a Cyrano de Bergerac in reverse; Ben's best pal in prison has been exchanging love letters with a young lady he's never met in the flesh, but when the pal is killed in the prison yard and Ben, after being released, meets the girl and she turns out to be Charlize Theron, he pretends to be the dead man. (This may sound like a bad idea, but remember that Entertainment Weekly has recently determined that Ben is only the fiftieth-smartest person in Hollywood.) Enter Theron's blue collar werewolf of a brother (Gary Sinise) and his posse of plug-uglies (Clarence Williams III, Donal Logue and Danny Trejo), who are under the mistaken impression that Ben used to work at the local casino and can help serve as tour director during their big Christmas Eve heist.
Reindeer Games is jerry-built on a switchback trail of reversals, revelations, and sputtered, improvised fake outs. It finally pushes its luck in its attempt to get one last twist in before the closing credits; we've read campaign literature from Lyndon LaRouche that makes more sense than this movie's last fifteen minutes. But up until then, this wintry, violent movie offers some good cheap thrills with its adrenaline overload. The cast of supporting baddies are as amusingly sleazy as any collection of movie lowlifes since Frankenheimer's 52 Pick-Up, which also featured Clarence Williams III looking very scary and completely out to lunch. It's a plot-driven movie, but with many diverting moments of local color, such as Danny Trejo thoughtfully laying out his plan to institute a second mid-summer Christmas season to boost the national economy, and Dennis Farina, as the stressed-out wiseguy in charge of the snowbound casino blasting away with a machine gun while calling out, "Hey, Santa, merry Christmas!" All this, plus the fiftieth-smartest guy in Hollywood takes several heavy blows to the face. Ho ho ho!
— Phil Nugent