Jogo de Morte

I was totally stoked about this movie after seeing the preview (by the way I can't stand the "cool" industry insiders who insist on calling movie previews "trailers" just to prove that they are cool movie insiders. Do they appear before or after the feature film??? DUH!!!).

Anyway, this movie turned out to be cheesy and formulaic. The preview made Snipes' character seem totally invincible with far superior karate fighting skills (which would have been awesome and something I long for).

After watching the Special Features - which were not very good at all - I realized what the problem was. The Director was thrown into this project right before they started shooting with little preparation (and possible experience in this genre) and has a working style of 'just getting it done'. He did just get it done - with very unremarkable results.

I don't blame Snipes at all - his performance was very good with what he had to work with. He seemed to just go along with this schlock, just as he went along with the con artists (one was actually named Kahn) who led him into an illegal tax scheme to defraud the federal government that landed him in jail.

I also see how movie Previews are made by independent production houses and can be very misleading about the actual quality of a film. In this case they made a very good one. Maybe they should have produced the entire film!

Oh, one more thing. 100 millions dollars (in 100's) can be carried in just 2 modest-sized duffel bags? Wow! How dumb do they think we are?

With a title like this, what can one expect? A bunch of clichés, seen it all befores, etc. No disappointment here scenario-wise. But what about Wesley Snipes?

Well, I have learned that Wesley Snipes has no emotions. His face is a neatly ironed blanket. It seems like he is sedated throughout the movie. I'm guessing the evil tax man took, besides all of his money, also the possibility of expressing emotions. He is not what you call stone cold - he is dead cold. Or possibly a sleep walker?

And Zoe Belle, the female "bad guy"? Hell, she's funny. Really funny. She tries to put on super scary serious I'm-tougher-than-tough face, but it comes out ridiculous. I honestly laughed a couple of times at her face. I'm thinking she was trying to be sort of a Clint Eastwood with that look, but it simply didn't play out.

But poor acting is not the worst thing here. Absolutely horrible, irritating soundtrack which instead of suspense brings only annoyance and repetitive need to use the mute button on my remote. Also, the camera work is below par and the ghosting effects are completely unnecessary, ugly and debilitating to the picture.

I have given this a very, very generous 3 out of 10.

Obviously, this movie should not be confused with the Bruce Lee movie of the same name. The only thing they have in common is the use of martial arts. Anyway, I didn't find this movie as bad as some of the user comments here. Although it was released direct-to-DVD, the production values are mostly strong; this movie could have been released to theaters. Shooting in Detroit also gave the movie a unique backdrop. But I was disappointed in the end. Although the action scenes do show that Snipes indeed knows his martial arts, they were directed and choreographed in a way that drains most of the excitement out them. Also a bad directorial touch was the use of black and white, which comes out of nowhere and seems out of place. The resolution of the climax will most likely leave viewers unsatisfied with how things are wrapped up. But long before that, the movie's mean streak will have turned off viewers (a TON of innocent people get killed during the movie!) Still, Snipes fans may be forgiving of a lot of these flaws, since this will probably be one of the last Snipes movies they'll get to see for a long time, with Snipes now in prison.

First of all let me point out that I really love action movies. I just recently spent time viewing several of Arnold's old movies, which are all classics! Take Commando - this is my definition of a great action film: Extremely simple story, but completely packed with some serious action, with a bad-ass protagonist spitting out cheezy one-liners after each round of pawnage!

Game of Death fails as a movie in pretty much every way possible. A simple "Arnold-like" action movie is what it SHOULD be. However, the people responsible for the film clearly thought that they had a story- line, actors, and camera-crew that would elevate this film to a "higher" level - whatever that is. Briefly summarized: The story and dialogue is a joke - some of the actors did such a poor job it almost makes some of the scenes embarrassing to watch. The main evil female agent must be one of the worst performances of 2010 - not to mention that the director for some reason decided to make most of the poorly acted dialogue scenes extremely long. So instead of filling the movie with cool karate-style Wesley Snipes action, the movie is mostly wasted on the weak story and the terrible acting. Most of the action scenes were even constantly interrupted by the bad guy having to shoot his mouth off - blah blah blah... What we WANT is pow pow pow!!!

By the way: The camera work and editing gave me a laugh. For some reason they have some sudden clips of black'n white shots - and some other artsy-fartsy filming which is COMPLETELY out of place.

I'll give this movie a 2/10 simply because I enjoy some of Wesley Snipes unarmed action scenes. But for gods sake don't waste your time watching this garbage like I did.

Finally a quick appeal to WS:

Dear Wesley,

Please fire your agent - or whoever persuaded you to participate in Game of Death. You are a cool guy and could renew your franchise of films where you kick ass again. But make it SIMPLE. A 1:30 film should have at least 60 minutes of action!!!

And remember to pay your taxes, Nebukanezer

PS: Wesley picks up a Glock 9mm (with silencer) from one of the bad guys in the hospital. These guns typically have between 15 and 17 rounds (full sized or compact versions). Without reloading the gun I think Wesley probably fired around 150 shots from this gun.

(46%) A fairly reasonable direct to DVD outing for Snipes, that is better than most of what Seagal can usually churn out without necessarily being up to cinema standards. There's a touch more effort put into the writing, even if it is pretty ropey at times, and the slightly slower pacing allows itself to build at least some sense of character absent from almost all movies of this type; there's also a coherently told plot adding another string to its bow. What does let this down more than a little though is the distracting direction that feels like the director made his way through every annoying effect preinstalled in his camera. With added help from famous faces of Robert Davi, Ernie Hudson, Zoe Bell, and fair share of decent action, making this is a decent watch, if not entirely anything that needs to be seen.