“Rule one: Never put a car thief behind the wheel!”

Drake’s rating: Three out of four dead Santas

Drake’s review: Nick and Rudy have very different ideas for the holidays. While Rudy simply wants to get back to his family home in time for Christmas, Nick has plans to meet his longtime pen pal, a beautiful woman named Ashley, and spend some quality canoodling time with her. There’s certainly something to be said for either plan and, although I personally lean towards the holiday canoodle, Rudy has missed out on seeing his family for the last several seasons thanks to the fact that he was a car thief who was unlucky enough to get caught, and he’s been sharing a prison cell with Nick instead of hot chocolate and pecan pie with his family.

Luckily for both men, they’re getting paroled just in time for the Yuletide festivities — and their respective holidays are just a bus ride away. Unluckily for Nick, a fight breaks out in the prison commissary and he ends up on the wrong side of a shiv. Saddened by the loss of his friend, Rudy is intent on heading home… right up until he sees Nick’s pen pal. As she has no idea what Nick looks like, Rudy hops off the bus and decides that canoodling just might be in his holiday plans after all. And since he’s familiar enough with his former cellmate’s correspondences with Ashley, it shouldn’t be too hard to take his place for a few days, right?

And so Rudy becomes Nick, and his dalliance with Ashley starts off all fun and frolicsome, right up until Ashley’s brother Gabriel shows up with his goon squad. It seems that Gabriel knows about Nick’s past as a criminal, and also that Nick was formerly employed as a security guard at a casino that Gabriel (nicknamed “Monster”) and his crew plan to rob. And that robbery sure would be a lot easier to pull off if Nick would be so kind as to spill all the beans about the casino’s security measures…

So the central idea here is that Rudy (Ben Affleck, Dazed and Confused) is the wrong man in the wrong place, having to pretend he’s someone he’s not just to stay alive. Which is fine, but Reindeer Games is a little too ambitious for its own good. Rudy claims not to be Nick, then has to clam up and continue the facade when it becomes swiftly obvious that Gabriel’s plans need a Nick, not a Rudy.

But the questions linger, and then get shoved aside completely as it’s revealed that Gabriel (Gary Sinise, The Quick and the Dead) and Ashley (Charlize Theron, Mad Max: Fury Road) have a relationship that’s more complicated than it seems. And it doesn’t stop there. The twists keep on coming until the credits roll, and what should be a fairly straight-forward action/thriller instead becomes something of a convoluted mess.

None of that should come as a complete surprise, however, considering Reindeer Games is a John Frankenheimer movie. And from Grand Prix to Ronin, it’s obvious that Frankenheimer is a fan of two things: Cars and plot twists. And honestly, I like both of those movies and I like Reindeer Games as well. But, because of all the twists and turns (some necessary, some not), it’s much harder to recommend as a holiday action flick than something much more straight-forward like Die Hard, which has twists of its own, but never lets them derail the main plot.

And then there’s the cast. This was the era when Affleck was just entering leading man territory, and he often appeared to be in over his head. This is not the Affleck from The Accountant, this is the Affleck from Armageddon and there’s a world of difference between the two. But really, none of the blame for this movie can be laid at his feet since most of the cast look just as confused as he does about what’s going on.

Still, at least Gary Sinise seems to be having a good time. Cast against type as a long-haired, jacked-up hoodlum, he swaggers through the film as clueless as everyone else, but never lets a little thing like a lack of clarity harsh his buzz. Gabriel’s just there for the mayhem, and to abuse Ben Affleck. And since this is the Affleck who was about to star in the dreadful Pearl Harbor, I’m OK with that.

So, yeah, this is not a particularly good movie, but like I said, I still like it. It’s a big wad of dumb that thinks it’s smart, which makes it even dumber. It’s loud and violent and stupid, and shouldn’t be on anyone’s Christmas list of must-watch movies, yet more often than not I’ll end up watching it during the holiday season.

What can I say? It might be a lump of coal, but if you’re expecting an empty stocking Reindeer Games just might be a surprise. Not necessarily a the best surprise, but sometimes you just take what you can get.

Intermission!

• Monster’s brute squad is casting brilliance: Donal Logue, Clarence Williams III and Danny Trejo make for a delightfully obtuse trio of thugs, and follow Sinise’s lead in just rolling along on the movie’s overly twisted path and taking delight in their admittedly entertaining dialogue.
• Also look for appearances by Isaac Hayes and Ashton Kutcher, as well as the always-enthusiastic Dennis Farina as the put-upon casino manager who would really rather be back in Vegas.
• Poor audience test screenings led to Reindeer Games being re-cut, and the release was pushed back from December 1999 to late February 2000, a terrible release date for a holiday-related flick.
• A director’s cut DVD was released a year later, adding in 20 minutes of footage. If you ignore my warnings and add Reindeer Games to your holiday viewing list, that’s the one to watch. Take that recommendation with a grain of salt, however, as my brain may be a bit damaged from seeing this flick a dozen or so times over the years.