''Dangerous Game'' (also known as ''Snake Eyes'') is a 1993 joint American-Italian

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super- ...

directed by

Abel Ferrara Abel Ferrara (born July 19, 1951) is an American filmmaker, known for the provocative and often controversial content in his movies and his use of neo-noir imagery and gritty urban settings. A long-time independent filmmaker, some of his best kn ...

, written by Nicholas St. John, and starring

Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, a ...

Harvey Keitel Harvey Keitel ( ; born May 13, 1939) is an American actor. He is known for his portrayal of morally ambiguous and "tough guy" characters. He first rose to prominence during the New Hollywood movement, and has held a long-running association with ...

, and

James Russo James Vincent Russo (born April 23, 1953) is an American film and television actor. He has appeared in over 150 films in three decades. Early life Russo was born in New York City, New York, to an Italian father and German mother. A graduate of t ...

Plot

Utilizing a film-within-a-film format, the overall plot involves

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

-based director Eddie Israel directing actors Sarah Jennings and Frank Burns in a Hollywood marital-crisis drama, ''Mother of Mirrors'', which is about a formerly wealthy but unemployed husband who berates his newly religious wife about what he considers her hypocritical aversion to their sex-and-drug lifestyle. During the shooting of that film, Israel becomes more and more demanding of his actors, growing increasingly obsessive with finding the ugly truths beneath the story's surface. All the while, his own carelessness and bad behavior with his own family begins to erode him and to corrode his marriage to Madlyn.

Cast

as Eddie Israel *

as Sarah Jennings *

as Francis "Frank" Burns * Nancy Ferrara as Madlyn Israel. The part was originally offered to

Jane Campion Dame Elizabeth Jane Campion (born 30 April 1954) is a New Zealand filmmaker. She is best known for writing and directing the critically acclaimed films ''The Piano'' (1993) and '' The Power of the Dog'' (2021), for which she has received a tot ...

. * Reilly Murphy as Tommy *

Victor Argo Victor Argo (November 5, 1934 – April 7, 2004) was an American actor of Puerto Rican descent who usually played the part of a tough bad guy in his movies. He had a career span of forty years. He is best known for '' Mean Streets'' (1973), ...

as Director of photography * Leonard L. Thomas as Prop guy * Randy Sabusawa as Producer *

Christina Fulton Christina Fulton (born June 26, 1967) is an American actress. Career Fulton has worked as a model with Elite Model Management and with LA Models. She was the face of Farlow Jeans and modeled for the "Too Cute" campaign. Fulton has had roles i ...

as Blonde *

Glenn Plummer Glenn E. Plummer (born August 18, 1961) is an American film and television actor best known as Timmy Rawlins in '' ER'' (1994-2007), and Vic Trammel in ''Sons of Anarchy'' (2008-2009). Biography Plummer was born in Richmond, California. Career ...

as Frank's buddy * Richard Belzer (''cameo'') * Annie McEnroe (''cameo'') * Sammy Jack Pressman (''cameo'') *

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with u ...

(''uncredited, archive footage'') as himself

Release

''Dangerous Game'' opened in US theaters on November 19, 1993. In 2007, Ferrara recalled, This was the first production by Madonna's Maverick Picture Company, a division of the newly formed entertainment company

Maverick Maverick, Maveric or Maverik may refer to: History * Maverick (animal), an unbranded range animal, derived from U.S. cattleman Samuel Maverick Aviation * AEA Maverick, an Australian single-seat sportsplane design * General Aviation Design Bure ...

. In Japan, the film was released under the name ''Body II'' as a

sequel A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same ...

to Madonna's other 1993 film '' Body of Evidence'' which had previously been released as ''Body''. Neither film is directly connected to each other in narrative nor storyline. The video release of the film was banned in

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

, most likely due to a violent rape scene. The cinema distributors (Abbey Films) never submitted it for an Irish theatrical release. The decision was appealed by

PolyGram Filmed Entertainment PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (formerly known as PolyGram Films and PolyGram Pictures or simply PFE) was a British film studio founded in 1979 which became a European competitor to Hollywood, but was eventually sold to Seagram Company Ltd. in 1 ...

– the viewing took place on 23 November, where the ban was upheld.

Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

reports that 31% of 16 reviews were positive, with an average rating of 4.09/10. Both ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'' praised ''Dangerous Game'', with

Janet Maslin Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...

of the former complimenting both Keitel and Madonna for their acting, and admiring the film's "raw, corrosive" quality: "Shot in a grainy, urgent style with occasional lapses into video, it has a fury that goes well beyond the story at hand, and an energy level that transcends the story's self-indulgence. This tough, abrasive film maker is seldom without his deadly serious side. 'Dangerous Game' is angry and painful, and the pain feels real." Kevin Thomas of the ''

'' found it "compelling and explosive", saying, " 's a film of no-holds-barred language, passion and rage, but it's a move away from genre, more a chamber drama than action movie in which violence is more psychic than physical." He called Keitel "the ideal Ferrara star, his control, volcanic emotions and endless capacity for expressiveness and revelation matching up with those very qualities in Ferrara himself." Madonna, he said, "reveals the vulnerability as well as the strength of both the actress and the character she is playing." In a mixed review,

Peter Travers Peter Joseph Travers (born ) is an American film critic, journalist, and television presenter. He reviews films for ABC News and previously served as a movie critic for ''People'' and ''Rolling Stone''. Travers also hosts the film interview prog ...

of ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

'' called Keitel "superb" and the film "a mesmerizing jigsaw", but found that "Madonna's take on an emotional crackup comes up snake eyes ... and Ferrara's ''Dangerous Game'' stops being worth the playing." However,

Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for '' Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...

, giving it a C− grade in ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular ...

'', called it "an ego-driven botch, one of those dawdlingly self-important, semi-improvised affairs about a director making a movie that turns out to be just like the one you're watching (or is it the other way around?)," but allowed that, "Madonna isn't embarrassing; she plays down the wax-goddess exhibitionism." Both

Siskel & Ebert Gene Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) and Roger Ebert (June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013), collectively known as Siskel & Ebert, were American film critics known for their partnership on television lasting from 1975 to Siskel's dea ...

disliked the film and it later earned a place on their Worst of 1993 show. Siskel described the film in his initial review as "overwrought baloney" which Ebert concurred with and later denounced it as a "violent egotrip by its director Abel Ferrara."

Year-end lists

*Dishonorable mention – Glenn Lovell, ''

San Jose Mercury News ''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidia ...

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dangerous Game 1993 films 1993 drama films 1993 independent films 1990s English-language films Adultery in films American drama films American independent films English-language Italian films Italian drama films Italian independent films Films about actors Films about film directors and producers Films about filmmaking Films directed by Abel Ferrara Films scored by Joe Delia Films set in Los Angeles Films shot in Los Angeles Films shot in New York City Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films Obscenity controversies in film 1990s American films