Blu-ray Review – Surviving the Game

Certainly the ways of competing productions is nothing new in Hollywood, with studios periodically doing battle with the same ideas, often racing to reach the screen first to at least claim some freshness before comparisons begin. We're used to it with animated pictures ("Shark Tale" vs. "Finding Nemo," "Antz" vs. "A Bug's Life"), but dueling takes on "The Most Dangerous Game" featuring the physical might of homeless men on the run from a pack of relentless human hunters? 1993 and '94 were a wild time for this stuff, with Universal first to the market with the wonderfully furious Jean- Claude Van Damme actioner, "Hard Target." New Line Cinema showed up eight months later with "Surviving the Game," which traded Van Damme's muscular hustle and capable goon-smashing presence for Ice T and his less credible offering of self-defense. The two features share the same idea, but they're truly worlds apart in execution, with "Surviving the Game" dismally directed by Ernest Dickerson ("Juice," "Demon Knight"), who presents a viciously overacted take on rabid acts of survival, unwilling to control his hammy cast as they try to out-crazy one another, leaving Ice T to carry the little dramatic weight in the endeavor, and that's…not happening. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com