The Game
Nicholas Van Orton is a wealthy investment banker, but his success has come at a cost.
He is estranged from both his ex-wife and his only brother, Conrad.
He remains haunted from having seen his father commit suicide on the latter's 48th birthday.
On his own 48th birthday, Conrad presents Nicholas with an unusual gift
- a voucher for a "game" offered by a company called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS).
Conrad promises that it will change Nick's life.
Nicholas has doubts about CRS, but he meets club members who enjoyed the game.
He goes to CRS's offices to apply and is irritated by the lengthy and time-consuming series
of psychological and physical examinations required.
He is later informed that his application has been rejected.
Nicholas begins to believe that his business, reputation, finances, and safety are at risk.
He encounters a waitress, Christine, who appears to have been endangered by the game.
Nicholas contacts the police to investigate CRS, but they find the offices abandoned.
Eventually, Conrad appears to Nicholas and apologizes,
claiming that he, too, has come under attack by CRS.
With no one else to turn to, Nicholas finds Christine's home.
He soon discovers that she is a CRS employee and that her apartment was staged.
Christine tells Nicholas that they are being watched.
Nicholas attacks a camera, and armed CRS troops
begin to swarm the house and fire upon them.
Nicholas and Christine are forced to flee.
Nicholas realizes that CRS has drained his financial accounts, and he is now broke.
Christine tells him that some of his closest associates are part of the game.
Just as he begins to trust Christine, he realizes she has drugged him, and he falls unconscious.
Nicholas wakes up to find himself entombed in a cemetery in Mexico.
He sells his gold watch to escape.
He returns to find his mansion has been foreclosed
and most of his possessions have been removed.
He retrieves a hidden gun and seeks the aid of his ex-wife.
While talking with her and apologizing for his neglect and mistreatment,
he discovers that Jim Feingold, the CRS employee
who had conducted his psychological test,
is an actor who works in television advertisements.
Nicholas locates and forces Feingold to take him to CRS, whereupon he takes Christine hostage.
He demands to be taken to the leader of CRS.
Attacked by CRS troops, Nicholas takes Christine to the roof
and bars the door behind them.
The CRS troops begin cutting through the door.
Christine realizes that Nicholas' gun is not a prop and is terrified.
She frantically tells Nicholas that the conspiracy is a hoax, a fiction that is just part of the game,
that his finances are intact, and that his family and friends are waiting on the other side of the door.
He refuses to believe her. The door bursts open, and Nicholas shoots the first person to emerge:
his brother Conrad, bearing an open bottle of champagne.
Distraught, Nicholas leaps off the roof, just as his late father did.
Nicholas' life passes before his eyes as he falls.
He smashes through a glass roof and lands on a giant air bag.
Emergency medical technicians carefully remove him, and he finds himself in a ballroom
full of his friends, family, and every figure involved in his Game;
it had been just a game all along.
Conrad is alive and well, and explains that he initiated the game
to get his brother to embrace life and not end up like their father.
Nicholas breaks into tears, relaxes, and begins to enjoy the party once his shock has dissipated.
Later, Nicholas splits the bill for the game with Conrad.
When he sees that Christine has left the party, he follows her outside to her cab.
He asks her to dinner, and she offers to share a coffee with him
before her flight takes her to her next game assignment in Australia.
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