Critical Film Analysis: Surviving the Game

I'm going to offer a weekly installment from now on, critically analyzing important films from the past century. Today's offering will be that of Surviving the Game starring, and I use the word "starring" in a way that only a man of Ice-T's stature could be capable of being THE star...especially considering other actors involved such as Gary Busey, Rutger Hauer, and Charles S. Dutton aka the token black inspirational guy in Rudy.

I will admit, this is a personal favorite movie of mine and has been for many years. Whenever I'm feeling down and I'm home alone late at night (which is 99 percent of the time) I turn on TNT or TBS and of course they'll be showing Suriviving the Game! The premise of the film is simple. Ice-T plays Jack Mason, a homeless man just trying to survive on the streets of Seattle. His only friends are a dog and another older homeless guy who I speculate is a Navy Veteran based on the battleship hat he wears. Ice-T (From now on I will refer to him as Jack) decides to hop a fence late at night to steal a huge leg/shank/chunk of meat to feed himself and his homeless compadre. Unfortunately they run into a evil police officer/security guard who brutalizes the old man. Well, they fight off the security guard and return to a homeless habitat and the poor people feast!! Oh the next morning the homeless guy is dead, probably from massive internal bleeding...but who cares, he was homeless!

Lets cut to the chase, at one point Jack (okay fuck this, I'm calling him Ice-T) Ice T tries to commit suicide but is saved by Charles S. Dutton. Dutton's character promises him a job and refers him to some other guy played by Hauer. Ice T does some physical tests and is hired as a outdoor survival consultant and they all fly to the pacific northwest. Little does Ice T know that they are all going to hunt HIM!....as we know man is the most dangerous animal of them all! Well I don't want to ruin the rest of the film for the uninitiated but let me say, what occurs from then on is quite gripping. You learn slowly that Ice T is a tortured soul who at one time had a family and a child. You also learn that Gary Busey is a psycho fucker who I doubt was really acting for the most part and was probably being himself. Below I will provide an excerpt of brilliant screen writing:

Taxi Driver: [a taxi had just ran over Mason's dog]
[Taxi driver pointing at blood painted over the front-end of the cab]
Taxi Driver: What about my taxi!
Ice T: Yo', man, fuck yo' taxi!

Truly chilling writing there!! But what artisan of the spoken word could have made such an exchange possible? From brain to paper to the silver screen, the man behind this is none other than Eric Bernt! Writer of such hit films as Romeo Must Die and Virtuosity (Which I really fucking like as well!). This is probably one of the most under appreciated pieces of art from the last century. I feel that there is a certain subtext that I must admit, frightens me to the very core. I'm not sure if you have heard of Robert Hansen before but I have. He was a serial killer. DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE DID? Wikipedia will tell you!

He began killing prostitutes around 1980; he would pay them for sex and kidnap and rape them once they were in his power. He would then fly them out to his cabin in the Knik River Valley in his private plane, and stalk and kill them with a hunting knife and a .223 caliber Ruger Mini-14 rifle.

So as you can see, truth is stranger than fiction...except for the part where Ice T gains revenge and is not a prostitute but in fact a former landlord. Next week I will be looking at a yet undecided film. Possible candidates include Commando, Over The Top, Cobra, Varsity Blues, but probably Hard Target. For a teaser, Hard Target is a movie that stars Jean Claude Van Damme...who has a big mullet and Wilford Brimley as "UNCLE DOUVEE" a moon shiner who is also a bow and arrow expert. I swear I'm not making any of this up.