House Of Games (DVD)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

If you have seen playwright, screenwriter, and director David Mamet's later film, "The Spanish Prisoner," a clever story of deception and duplicity, you will have a good idea what "House of Games," 1987, his first directorial effort, is all about. It's one part Hitchcock, one part film noir, and one part "The Sting," making for a heady mixture of dark, intricate thrills. As with so many of Mamet's films, there is a certain detached quality about it, too, a distancing he creates between his characters and the audience, which is also part of the fun. One thing: "House of Games" will keep you on your toes and guessing from beginning to end, meaning there's seldom a boring moment to be found.

Lindsay Crouse and Joe Mantegna star in what is essentially a cinematic duet. Crouse plays a psychologist, Dr. Margaret Ford, who has just published a best-selling book called "Driven: Obsession and Compulsion in Everyday Life." After working with a patient who is a compulsive gambler and claims he is going to be killed for money he owes, she seeks out the man to whom he owes the money, an apparent gambler named Mike (Montegna), to tell him to leave her patient alone. I say he's an "apparent" gambler because it turns out Mike is not a gambler at all but a con man. He hangs out at a bar appropriately called the "House of Games."

After their introduction, the psychologist finds the life of a con artist fascinating and asks if she can do a psychological study of the confidence business. Then, she gets involved with him in an elaborate con game. She gets sucked into his milieu. Or perhaps suckered into it would be more precise. And she loves it. To tell you any more would be to spoil the surprises, so let it suffice that the plot takes on a number of twists and turns before arriving at its surprising and unexpected conclusion.

Crouse, at the time Mamet's wife, plays her role coolly, her psychologist character very intelligent, very much outwardly in control, but inwardly quite insecure. She is not sure of herself, her profession, or her effects on her patients. She doubts she can even help them anymore. Mike, on the other hand, is extremely sure of himself. He knows he's a criminal and isn't afraid to admit it. In an ironic shift, he also appears to know more about human nature than the psychologist. He explains to the doctor that the con man gives his mark confidence, and he is up front in telling her, "Don't trust nobody."

The story attempts to suggest that we can't hide who we are or what we want. Nothing is as it appears to be. The whole world is a house of games, games we all play, things we all hide. Ford even goes so far as to wonder if the practice of psychology isn't really anything more than a socially acceptable con game. In a life on the edge of collapse, her chance meeting with Mike is like a breath of fresh air. But, remember, reality and appearances can often be quite different.