Some movies hide their genius. Some movies look ridiculous but when you dig deeper you find something remarkable and worthwhile under the layers of bad direction and terrible acting. Z-list celeb vehicle Dangerous Game is not one of those movies. Peel away the layers of crud and you unveil a secret gateway, one that leads you to so much more crap. An infinite fountain of awfulness.
Dangerous Game is, in theory, a football thriller. The plot involves a nice but dim premiership football player who, due to a series of unlikely events, starts committing armed robbery to pay off the Russian mob. The movie opens with a daring heist as two men in David Beckham and Wayne Roonie masks hold up a security van. This opening scene is the highlight of the movie, and it’s pretty bland. The rest is a journey into incomprehensible editing, boring plot twists and terrible acting.
Our not very bright football superstar is played by Calum Best, a chap known mostly for being footballer George Best’s son, and for appearing on a great many reality TV shows. He’s assisted in his efforts with other barely famous types, such as Darren Day as a Russian mobster and the likes of Lucy Pinder and Jess Impiazzi as forgettable female characters. All of these people are apparently famous for, well, we aren’t really sure. They can’t act. Best spends most of his time two seconds away from asking someone for a prompt. These celebrities are assisted by a solid supporting cast of British low-budget movie actors, who easily perform the likes of Best and Day off the screen, whilst trying really hard not to.
The few not-boring bits are accidental. There’s a heist in a shoe-shop which is sort of funny. Darren Day’s Russian accent is a case-study on why you shouldn’t use cartoon show Rocky and Bullwinkle as a voice coach. Some of the direction is truly abysmal and we get the feeling the camera operators had more fun shooting b-roll. We have camera angles so bad that they could be used as examples of things to never do with a camera. We wonder what was left on the cutting room floor, and shudder with horror that out there, somewhere, a worse edit of this movie exists. This isn’t a horror movie, it’s just a horrible movie.
Starburst Magazine’s mission is to seek out Cult Entertainment and tell the world about it. The term cult often means that we have to step off the beaten path to find things that are a little bit different and ignored by the mainstream. But sometimes, those things should be ignored with good cause. Avoid at all costs.
A DANGEROUS GAME / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: RICHARD COLTON / STARRING: CALUM BEST, DARREN DAY, LUCY PINDER, JESS IMPIAZZI, ALEX REID / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
