Welcome to The Twelve Ways of Christmas, where we unpack weird and overlooked holiday films. And let’s face it, the blog roll could use the attention.
With little rhyme or reason, check in from now until The Day That Must Not Be Named for a new entry.
If you can’t choose your family but can choose your friends, what happens when they’re one and the same? That’s the operative question in John Frankenheimer’s oft-maligned 2000 thriller Reindeer Games. After serving out his prison sentence for grand theft auto, small time car thief Rudy (Ben Affleck) is ready for a second chance — and for the cup of hot chocolate and slice of pecan pie he never shuts up about. His cellmate Nick (James Frain) has a rosier outlook on the outside with a girlfriend (Charlize Theron) waiting for him, but when Nick is killed in a prison fight two days before their release, Rudy assumes Nick’s identity and shacks up with Ashley, who despite sharing hundreds of letters with Nick has never seen him in person. That’s great for Rudy, who spends his first days out of the clink holed up in a hotel room with Charlize Theron. That’s not so great when Ashley’s brother Gabriel (Gary Sinise), kidnaps Rudy’s “Nick” to help him rob a Michigan casino for all it’s worth.
There’s an inherently epic quality to Christmas Eve in cinema. The holiday season is on the cusp of change and the weight of the world (or at least the portion that observes Christmas) feels ready for that change at a moment’s notice and if only by proximity to it, Reindeer Games builds to a climactic head. As “Nick,” Rudy fights an uphill battle the entire way, from an awkward first meeting with Ashley to convincing Gabriel and his band of misfits he knows two shits about the interior of the Tomahawk Casino. Affleck’s never been an action hero, but he smirks for the camera when a scene demands a smart ass comment. The humor has a way of deflating Reindeer Games‘s slow burn heist but a smart-mouthed Rudy plays well with a gang of casino-robbing Kris Kringles.
And how about them Kris Kringles? As his greasy 90s bangs make abundantly clear, Gary Sinise’s Gabriel is a dude not to be messed with. He isn’t intimidating — a laughably bad sequence where Gabriel “tortures” Rudy with darts confirms this — but he is unpredictable and his threats come fast and furious for Rudy. Obviously, offing Ben Affleck 30 minutes into a Ben Affleck is an unlikely outcome. Offing innocent ice-fishing bystanders as expendable witnesses isn’t. Sinise taps back into Lieutenant Dan’s crazed, alcoholic and on Christmas, that plays like some terrifying drunk uncle.
Or maybe a drunk father. Mistaking Rudy’s “Nick” for the cellmate who actually knew a thing or two about robberies, Gabriel believes Rudy can plan a successful Christmas Eve heist and rip off Dennis Farina’s low-rent Michigan casino, but enlisting Rudy’s help means Gabriel must invite Nick into their demented family. Gabriel’s patriarchal figurehead barks orders to his henchmen who might as well be mischievous brothers or cousins at the very least. Meanwhile, Ashley’s more like a daughter to Gabriel’s overbearing and abusive demeanor, and Rudy’s going to have to jump through a hell of a lot of hoops to impress “daddy.”
Frankenheimer’s infinite string of double- and triple-crosses undoes such a tidy reading of character dynamics yet a familial bond persists even when strict labels fail and eventually, Rudy becomes dead set on escaping this family to get back to his own. His blabbering about holiday baked goods and his smalltown background are diametrically at odds with the quiet Midwestern life Gabriel’s gang believes money can free them from. In their eyes, you’ve got to outright steal what you want. Meanwhile, Rudy’s return home makes for his own redemption and he learns to give instead of take. Thank God you can still pick your friends.
Way #1: Batman Returns
Way #2: Black Nativity
Way #3: The Gingerdead Man
Way #4: The Ice Harvest
Way #5: Christmas in July
Way #6: Fred Claus
Way #7: Mon oncle Antoine
Way #8: Christmas in Connecticut