Game 6

Directed by Michael Hoffman, Game 6 follows Michael Keaton’s Nicky Rogan as he awaits the opening of his latest play (and an especially important baseball game) alongside a series of periphery characters (including Griffin Dunne’s Elliott Litvak and Catherine O’Hara’s Lillian Rogan). It’s clear immediately that Game 6‘s curiously (and aggressively) low-rent sensibilities are, to put it mildly, a problem, as the picture suffers from an arms-length feel that continually prevents the viewer from working up much interest in or enthusiasm for the central character’s exploits – with the far-from-engrossing atmosphere compounded by an aggressively meandering narrative and an ongoing emphasis on unconvincing and self-consciously weird dialogue. There’s little doubt, as a result, that Keaton’s predictably commanding turn as the less-than-sympathetic protagonist is slowly-but-surely rendered moot, and it goes without saying, as well, that Hoffman essentially (and effectively) squanders the equally compelling work of a top-notch supporting cast that includes Harris Yulin, Bebe Neuwirth, and Robert Downey, Jr. The completely anticlimactic final stretch, which involves certain characters watching a baseball game, ensures that Game 6 ends on as underwhelming a note as one could envision, with the final result a mostly misbegotten effort that possesses few, if any, elements worth getting wholeheartedly excited about.

*1/2 out of ****