The latter films of director John Frankenheimer can be split between great films like 52 Pick-Up (1986) or Ronin (1998) and lesser films in which the director had little at stake like The Island Of Dr. Moreau (1996). John Frankenheimer’s last film, Reindeer Games (2000) fits precisely in the middle of these two camps. There’s some interesting things going on in Reindeer Games but it never achieves any kind of real greatness.
Reindeer Games is one of those films where the director’s cut is vastly different and far superior to the theatrical cut. The director’s cut of Reindeer Games debuted on home video without any theatrical release and saw roughly twenty additional minutes put back into the film. These additional scenes are pure excess of style. Reindeer Games isn’t just a Christmas action movie after all, it is John Frankenheimer’s Christmas action movie.
Reindeer Games, at least in its director’s cut, is the anti-Ronin. With Reindeer Games, John Frankenheimer took all of the kinetic energy and glossy cool of Ronin and channeled it into a far fetched dark comedy/heist movie with more twists than a barrel of pretzels. The style of Ronin has been turned up to an extreme that renders Frankenheimer’s bold camera moves, tight close-ups and white-knuckle action as deconstructionist camp. Reindeer Games is Frankenheimer picking his own aesthetic apart with masochistic glee and we’re all invited to get as lost in the mayhem as Ben Affleck’s hapless ex-con protagonist Rudy/Nick.
On such an adrenaline rush of a ride goofy Ben Affleck is the perfect audience surrogate. Affleck is one of the weaker performers in the film but that is an asset. Affleck can play charmingly dumbfounded like few others and Frankenheimer exploits this to great effect. Frankenheimer also isn’t shy about subverting Affleck’s movie star status either in a series of humiliating set pieces. Affleck’s function in Reindeer Games is very much akin to Danny Kaye’s role in The Court Jester (1955). Kaye picks apart the films and persona of Errol Flynn while Affleck tackles the macho spectacles of John Frankenheimer.
The only problem is that Frankenheimer takes his own character assassination a bit too far at times, losing sight of plot, motives, and character as he barrels into the most exaggerated version of his films. Reindeer Games is an unbridled exercise in post-modernism packed with intertextual references to Frankenheimer’s other late period films. It’s just too dense for its own good.
Paradoxically, the aesthetic density that keeps Reindeer Games from being a great Frankenheimer film is precisely why it is one of the most fun films in the auteur’s career. The fact that Frankenheimer’s last film is this audacious and fresh is a testament to him as a film artist. In a perfect world Reindeer Games would eclipse Die Hard (1988) as the go-to Christmas heist comedy.
