Review of Dangerous Game

Introduction

The trailer for Dangerous Games proclaims Abel Ferrara as Hollywood’s most controversial director – his previous films include California, Bad Lieutenant, King of New York, Driller Killer and the amusingly titled Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy.

Dangerous Game stars Harvey Keitel as filmmaker Eddie Israel, shooting the movie “The mother of mirrors”. The movie tells the story of Eddies demands as a director, the three main characters having affairs with each other, much of which is under the influence of drugs…

Video

The video quality can best be described as average to atrocious. In general the presentation is a little dark, with a slight hint of grain on some scenes, there’s also a little dirt on display. Some scenes (which would appear to have been shot as if looking through the camera) have more grain than your average wheat field and look absolutely awful – VideoCD quality and some of the worst video I’ve seen on DVD.

Visually the film is dull, although well made, taking place mainly indoors on the set, in hotel rooms etc.

Audio

The soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and is adequate throughout the film, with the dialogue (which constitutes almost all of the soundtrack) clear and understandable throughout.

Features

There’s just a trailer and photo gallery on offer.

The menus are a static collage of images from the film and are merely functional.

This was a review copy and didn’t come with any packaging or inserts.

Conclusion

If the words tedious and boring didn’t exist before Dangerous Game was released, they would have been invented to describe it. The acting is fine, and it is well made, but it didn’t ignite a single spark of interest for me from beginning to end and I found it to be a thoroughly unrewarding movie, which is too slow and too long. As with many other “controversial” films, there’s too much controversy and not enough of a good, enjoyable film.

In addition, the video (which I’ve marked 5 on the assumption the grainy scenes are supposed to be grainy) and sound aren’t great and the extras are limited, so the poor content isn’t helped by nice surroundings.

Overall, this is one for fans only, anybody else should try before they buy.