Surviving the Game

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Surving The Game

Directed by	Ernest R. Dickerson
Produced by	Fred C. Caruso
Written by	Eric Bernt
Starring	Ice-T Rutger Hauer Gary Busey
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	April 15, 1994
Running time	96 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

Surviving The Game is a 1994 action film directed by Ernest R. Dickerson, starring Ice-T, Rutger Hauer and Gary Busey. It is loosely based on the short story The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell.

[edit] Plot details

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Mason (Ice-T) is a homeless man from Seattle who loses his only friends - a fellow homeless man and his dog - on the same day. Dejected, he's about to take his own life when a mysterious benefactor, Thomas Burns (Hauer) steps in and offers him a job. After taking a physical, he's told that he's to be a guide for a group of well-heeled hunters.

Flying to a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods, Mason meets the rest of the hunting party, including the founder of the hunt, the psychotic psychiatrist Doc Hawkins (played by Gary Busey), all of whom payed $25,000 for the privilege of being there. Hawkin's mental instability (ironic, given that he himself is a psychiatrist) is shown in a powerful (and typically Busey) monologue in which he tells the story of his "birthmark." The other hunters include a lawyer, homeless shelter volunteer (who picks the "game" for the hunt), Wolfe Sr., a wealthy man from Wall Street, and his son, Derek Wolfe Jr., who is at first ignorant of the true purposes of the hunt. After a hearty meal, Mason goes to sleep. The next day, he's roughly awoken and told that he's the prey they're going after - their reasoning - as a homeless man, no one's going to miss him, and they do not consider a homeless man a "real" person. This is a critique of the rich's attitude towards the lowerclass. The hunting party will give him a running head start of however long it takes the hunting party to eat breakfast. After an initial hesitation, Burns threatens to shoot Mason if he does not try to run away, and Mason bolts for the woods on foot, while the others eventually pursue him on Off-Road bikes.

Mason eventually doubles back to the original cabin to deceive the hunters, where he finds a shelf of glass jars in a back room, each of them filled with a head of a previously hunted homeless man, showing how long this has been going on. Mason eventually manages to kill all but two of the hunters - Burns himself and the lawyer John Griffin, who, after seeing the error in his ways of hunting the homeless, is murdered by his companions. It is also noteworthy that Derek constantly objects to the practice, though he also dies by falling off a tree suspended over a gorge, invoking a slow-motion and dramatized "Nooo!!!" by his father, Wolfe Sr. Burns makes it to his airplane and flies away, leaving Mason alone. Back in the city, Burns picks up his fake passport, dresses as a priest, and is about to leave when Mason confronts him in an alley. Mason leaves behind a rifle, which Burns uses to try and shoot Mason - however, Mason clogged up the front of the barrel, causing it to backfire and killing Burns in the end.