The Execution Game

"Are you retarded?" This is me completing The Game trilogy on Blu-ray from Arrow over the course of about 5 days. I didn't expect to finish it that quickly, but the entire series was a pleasant surprise and worth putting ahead of some other things I had wished to watch. I liked the opening few sequences quite a bit, they showcase the cinematography and storytelling that made these films so much fun for me. Long, continuous, action filled shots that encapsulate the danger that Shohei is in. Generally speaking each film looks nicer than the last, but that's to expected when equipment and technology become much better and the budget is essentially doubled. The Execution Game is much closer to capturing the brilliance of The Most Dangerous Game than The Killing Game with the creative camera placement and the long format sequences. This all culminates in what are probably the two most fantastic shots of the entire series towards the end of the film. Shohei is presented very differently in parts of this film than he is in the other two, which I appreciated. Almost a shell of his former self dropped back into a world of isolation and paranoia, not the way he left it. There's occasional reminiscing, maybe just an attempt to make sense of it all or a way to remember who and what he once was. He's just more cerebral and focused. He's still the same assassin he was before this movie, but he's not the overly cocky Shohei from The Killing Game. There's a lot of character development from him throughout the trilogy, which I didn't anticipate in a series that feels like it could get stagnant easily. At the end of the day, these films didn't impress me because I was overwhelmingly blown away by the plot. You kind of know what you're going to get. Frankly though, who cares? It's just so well done, and the performances by Yusaku Matsuda are some of my favorite I've ever seen paired alongside a world class directing job by Toru Murakawa. I love this trilogy and I can't believe it's as relatively unknown as it is. What a blind buy.