Reindeer Games – 1 star

Reindeer Games. Imagine Paul Reubens playing Sam Spade and you come close to Ben Affleck as a hardened car thief (yes, because our hero, though a criminal, must not be a real criminal, he must be a car thief, like Nicolas Cage in Gone in 60 Seconds or the redheaded guy from NYPD Blue in the other Nicolas Cage car thief movie) who comes out of prison pretending to be his ex-cell mate (shanked, I kid you not, by DE Dana Stubblefield, formerly of the Washington Redskins) so he can score with his ex-cell mate’s pen pal, a lithe blonde played by Charlize Theron, because all criminals get lithe blonde pen pals who wait for them outside the prison gates and then take them to a motel, and all of these pen pal women are Charlize Theron attractive too. It’s true. Ask Scott Peterson.

So, then Theron’s scraggly, scummy cohort (Gary Sinise) and his crew arrive and they want Affleck to help them rob a casino where Affleck used to work, except that Affleck didn’t work there, his ex-cell mate did, and so, of course, you see the problem.

Nice pool scene with Theron. Otherwise, plodding, stupid and nouveau violent (slo-mo, big holes in people, and snappy one-liners simultaneously).