Good start, but then it gets ruined

An absolute waste of money

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

House of Games has enough interesting content, without being anything special. Lindsay Crouse has been in quite a few things I've liked, but I've never really liked her. All her characters seem to be dead pan, so there isn't much to get out of it. She plays roles that require sex appeal, which she does not have. Joe Mantegna as Mike, on the other hand I thought was quite good. The start of the film was pretty cool, the quality declines a bit after the card game though. The scene near the end where the con artists are all sitting around together, I find to be rather idiotic. I mean, there is a good chance Margaret will show up regardless of whether she thinks anything is up. Also, throughout the film many of the cons require specific leaps to be had by the unknowing parties and they all happen to work out, which is too unrealistic.

I think my main interest in House of Games, and what it does at its sharpest in both the writing and the direction as Mamet creates a gloomy and dark city (Seattle doubles for his usual Chicago though), is that it's a neo-noir. This is a movie that has plenty of twists and turns, and how many you can see will depend on how many of these sorts of stories with characters who double-cross and then even triple-cross in the unfolding of events. But while he puts a little sex and a couple of spots of violence on what happens, it's not really his concern, though it is important that that's there (the desire between Mike and Margaret is also part of the con, which I'll get to in a moment); what matters is how we have to pay attention to what's unfolding, that every little moment matters, and that when Mantagna says to Crouse that when it comes to a con, "Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine," it's also directed at the audience.This isn't to say that Mamet is a crook or out to make it so that he does things cheaply or cheats - I think this is what sets apart something like this from, say, the recent Shyamalan Split or some of his other films, which have brilliant direction but (no one wants to say it but I will) poor writing - he's out to entertain us above all else. The idea is to have this Margaret character not simply as an audience surrogate into this world of con-men, though she is that; she gets introduced because she's a psychologist of some kind (interested in the behavioral side of things, she's even written a book about it as we find out in the first scene), and one of her patients threatens to kill himself if he doesn't pay back a low-life guy at the "House of Games" bar downtown. Now let's see the film-noir part kick in - will she also be a femme fatale? She goes and gets roped in with Mike to pay off the guy's debt (why exactly she feels indebted, not sure, but let's roll with it, it's a film-noir after all), and is part of a con involving another player (the national treasure Ricky Jay), in order to win at some cards. It doesn't go well, but she sees the (easy) tell of a water pistol, and then she gets more interested in this guy Mike. Could there be a new book in this? Or does she want to know more because, well, in the world of therapy she's in there's not much she can really do. It may be simplistic on Mamet's part to make it like this, that she truly can't help, say, the woman who is really in a bad way in this hospital, but it's really about how it affects *her*, that she sees what she does (or the system itself) as a con, that she's trying to earn the patient's confidence but... well, can she if she doesn't give them her own? The story unfolds from there as she tries to learn the rope from Mike (an awesome cameo from a young William H Macy happens as he shows an example to her at a money transfer about how 'conning' works), and she gets deeper into some s***. What happens in the second half I'd rather leave for you to discover, but the strength of the film, aside from Mamet's understanding and control over his film-noir tropes, is that the script got more interesting as it went on. It isn't an easy film emotionally to get in to, and I'm not sure if at first Mamet intentionally directed Crouse to be kind of tight-lipped or even robotic in some of her acting choices, or if it was in the script itself (as with the Coens or of course Tarantino, it feels like every comma and every pause is written in, which is fine). Also there is this feeling of... well, not so much a feeling; when critics complain about Kubrick movies leaving them cold, I wondered if that was actually how I'd come away from this.But once Mamet gets to that first card scene with Ricky Jay, the movie really takes off (not to mention JT Walsh in a choice role - this movie is full of characters that give actors *real* moments to shine, even if it's only a few lines like for Macy), and the relationship develops more with Mantagna and he sort of elevates things with Crouse. I will say the very end, the last scene, left me puzzled as to why it's there - it involves a moment of pickpocketing that isn't out of character, I only wonder how it's supposed to connect back to things we've seen or tie things up, unless it's meant *not* to tie things up for Margaret, if that makes sense - but perhaps a second viewing will bring more to the table. It invites it, and I was glad I watched it, even as I suspected (and was proved correct) that parts of the con that are happening in the movie are what they all are. But, hey, Mamet's trick worked for me, as did the evoking the atmosphere of a certain section of the criminal (or just low-life in a charming sense) underworld we don't get to see.

No use pretending there aren't some great lines in this Mamet masterpiece. There are holes in the story, sure, and I'll get to those later. But for those of you wondering how you transfer a work of literature from the stage to the film set, this makes for a wonderful study. You may have noticed how some techniques do not transfer from the stage to film set easily, if at all, but that's partly what makes this film so fascinating. It's a play on roles and their traps and freedoms.Margaret Ford is an intriguing character; educated to the point of embodying a robotic decorum, her faintly masculine persona as an educator is absorbing to watch. Her success as a psychologist and an author should bring her a sense of inner peace and satisfaction, but there is something missing from the equation.The fact is that Margaret is intelligent enough to know that she is not really helping people, only playing a role of elevated status in the social order. A role she has worked hard and studied hard to win. But now that she is secured in her success she has doubts about its true validity. She possesses advanced knowledge of a type, but have her educational activities drawn out the best in her or simply made her another cookie cutter personality? Margaret wants to help and it is this desire to truly help that gets her involved in some really rugged business.Enter Mike into the frame. Mike is also an intriguing character; soft-spoken and suave, glib almost to the point of being feminine, he also comes across as a personality conforming to a type of role, that of the shifty con man. He is playing the tough guy, but he's far too articulate to carry that off convincingly.So what's really going on here? What you have in 'House of Games' to my way of thinking, are males playing at being men and a lone female playing at being a female according to definitions that in the end prove as unworkable and unsatisfying as some of Margaret's psychology sessions with her patients. That these roles do the exact opposite of what they are intended to do, i.e., ultimately feminize the male in spite of all his macho posturing and masculinize the female despite her avowed assertion to want to help through expressions of her own compassion is what makes this so thought provoking a piece.Margaret realizes near the end of act one in this film that her intelligence and shrewd observational skills have just barely saved her from being conned out of a substantial portion of her money. At this point, she has demonstrated both Moral and Intellectual authority over these would be predatory Con Men. This is surely enough to warrant a chapter in her next upcoming book.But what does she do? She returns to have another dance with the Devil in the pale moonlight.Why? This is the interesting part and where the hole in the plot leaks like a squirt gun filled with water. Why does she do it? Why does Margaret return to consort with Con Men who have already tried to make her a mark and who undoubtedly will try again should she have any further dealings with them? What is it about her academic environment that is so arid and vacuous that she must at length seek out a criminal for a date? That this is in the end a date movie with a deadly twist is not be denied. It appears to me there should have been a male character or characters in Margaret's academic setting with whom she tries to relate but fails to do so. This would have lent greater credence to her rendezvous with Mike.Yes, Margaret comes back and bares her breast to all the misogynistic intentions and elaborated schemes of this den of thieves she has stumbled upon in her quest to truly help a human being in need.Why does she do it? To feel more like a woman? At the end, she attempts to exact her revenge on Mike using his methods which, it turns out he understands better than she does as he has been applying them most of his adult life.All I can say is I would have rather seen her wearing a wire and regaining both the Moral and Intellectual high ground she demonstrated at the beginning of the film to bookend it here.I think this would have been more interesting than seeing her become both a murderer and a thief. She could have watched Mike being taken away in handcuffs while she fought hard to stifle her tears at the loss of this love of her life. Somewhat like the last scene in 'The Maltese Falcon', only this time with the woman contemplating the stuff that dreams are made of...

*** This review may contain spoilers about (Double Indemnity – 1944) too ***Remember (Double Indemnity – 1944)? It's where the urban man discovered that he could be easily deceived by his dearest ones. Since that date, many urban men and women, in other movies, lived the same trick again and again. Yet, as times goes by, some of them learned the lesson, out of watching too many movies I think!, then developed an armor, and – why not – got to deceive the deceiver too. (House of Games) presents the phase where the played-with becomes a player, but does this movie play it right ?! This was originally intended to be a larger-budget movie with many "name" actors, but writer / director (David Mamet) chose to cast his wife (Lindsay Crouse) and friend (Joe Mantegna). Not necessarily a good decision! I didn't like the performance of (Crouse) as the heroine. Yes, the character is for an outwardly cold woman who suppresses her reactions, but that doesn't mean that the actress must be cold and suppress her reactions! I watched (Joe Mantegna) as an impostor before; a mild – if not idiot – one in some movies, and a bloody violent one in other. This time he didn't bring something else his known goods. Let alone that his charisma didn't help him being a lead, so he couldn't provide the masculine charm to convince us that he's that lover-in-predicament (especially after the murder's plot). Yet, still the worst of the movie is its climax.We have a con-is-born situation. Although that female psychiatrist, Margaret, looks initially innocent, but she has some impostor hidden inside of her, supposedly long time age. OK. But I believe that that character had to be beaten by the experience's intelligence of the first, and senior, impostor; Mike. Since the beginning we follow the interlock of the psychiatrist / the scientific experience, with the conman / the practical experience. If both of them are natural born impostors, one of them obviously has a primitive practical expertise, and I do mean Margaret. That's why I see that the gun, which she takes from Mike's partner and shots Mike himself with at the climax, isn't a real gun in the first place, or it is one that has false bullets (like the one which the fake cop, played by J.T. Walsh, was holding). Because Mike's death – in my viewpoint – had to be pure acting since that psychiatrist who declared finally her truth as a criminal, imposter, and killer doesn't hold a candle to those experienced conmen who practiced the profession longer than what she did.It's close to Double Indemnity's plot. At that 1940s movie there was a man who became a victim of a woman and her partner to kill someone so they may win something. Here, a woman became a victim of a man and his partner to kill someone – falsely – so they may win something. The difference this round is that the victim is smarter. She got to payback, kill the planners themselves and win everything. It's clear that (Mamet) wants to prove that the evil guy is inside of us, and if gets free will practice his games successfully on others, and if has science will be the cleverest player of them all. But I believe that the older criminal – even if lost the scientific systematization or the methodical mentality – is more capable of hoaxing that who's still a student in crime school. That master's experience must defeat the inexperienced (like the green sailor) or the new beginners (like the heroine herself) whether the degrees of evil inside of both, the master and the others, were equaled or not. Because – simply – no one wins but the lucky, and no one "always" wins but the clever player.It's as unpersuasive as going into a gang of pro pickpockets, while being no pickpocket, and pulling off stealing all of them ! Well, it's a Hollywood dream then. Therefore if – for instance – the last scene, of the restaurant, was kind of a late flashback; that flawed climax could have been more persuasive and realistic. Whatever the addition might be, the movie needed to root well that that psychiatrist was an old con indeed; she merely didn't have a big chance before, and the ones who played her didn't know that about her earlier. Overall, I liked how (Mamet) studied so many stings, scams and con jobs, tightened the matter of obsession from start to finish, and mastered making so sedate crime movie. However, I didn't think that the shocking climax is logical or solidly built. It's something to shock anyway, and hit the viewer with the movie's main moral about the devil in us. Hence, it serves finely as a revenge for all the inexperienced and – mostly – the previously hoaxed out there. To tell them that "you can deceive too, and – of all people – the ones who deceived you before, and without having any previous experience too". So it feels eventually as a perfect Revenge of The Nerds, not Revenge of The ones who-just-look-outwardly Nerds !