Release Date (UK) – 21st February 2011
Certificate (UK) – 15
Country – UK
Runtime – 93 mins
Director – Giorgio Serafini
Starring – Wesley Snipes, Gary Daniels, Zoe Bell
Sold as an ‘explosive revenge thriller’, Game of Death is a straight-to-DVD action release featuring the recently incarcerated Wesley Snipes starring alongside Gary Daniels (The Expendables) and Zoe Bell (Death Proof). The film follows the story of CIA agent Marcus Jones (Snipes) as he tries to infiltrate and assassinate the leaders of an evil arms-dealing operation. What starts as a simple infiltration mission however soon turns sour, as Marcus himself becomes the target of agents he had once trusted with his life.
Framed through the narrative of a confession, the symbolism of Game of Death is fairly clear. Very early on in the film Snipes approaches a church minister and asks for forgiveness. As he starts to recount his tale he soon reveals the contents of the mysterious bag he has with him, and we learn that Snipes’ character wants to give his money to the church community. Of course I refer to him as Snipes here, and not Marcus Jones, as throughout the entire framing device, there can be no doubt that it’s Snipes we’re watching, and not his character Marcus Jones.
Despite the rather blatant and somewhat cheesy ‘message to the fans’ however, it must be said that Snipes fulfils his role pretty well. The framing scenes certainly show a deeper side to Snipes than we are familiar with seeing in many of his other straight-to-DVD action releases of recent years. While the film itself is rather ropey, and lacks any significant depth, the part played by Snipes is at least a small shining light amidst the lashings of low budget dumb action. And unfortunately ‘dumb’ action really is the word of the day.
The motivations for the inevitable betrayal are flaky at best, and while they could have seemed believable given a good script and some well-constructed characterisation, what we have in the end is a dumb shooter with more bullets than a Rambo film – and far less intellectual engagement!
Game of Death’s problems are so numerous and varied there are very few elements to the film that are truly free from blame. The film’s original director Abel Ferrara quit the film after two weeks to focus on Jekyll and Hyde (2010), and what we have in his absence if quite frankly a mess. The editing is… weird, and tries desperately to be ‘artsy’, yet fails miserably and appears glaringly out of place. Indeed the cast are perhaps the only redeeming feature to be found in Game of Death. While Zoe Bell is quite clearly a stuntwoman first and an actress second, her effort really can’t be called into question. Similarly, while her co-villain Gary Daniels does his best to play the evil villain and convey some form of menace, I don’t think there’s an actor out there who could have done a better job at trying to drag this clunky film to its final conclusion.
If you’re a fan of either Snipes, Daniels of Bell there might be something in this film for you, but really, you’d probably be better off putting your hard-earned money elsewhere.
Game of Death is released on DVD and Blu-ray on the 21st February – you can pre-order it here and we’ve included the trailer below
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