If you ever have a Fuck Whitey Film Festival, be sure to include Surviving the Game, a Most Dangerous Game update for the moviegoer who has both Men’s Journal and Soldier of Fortune sitting on his toilet tank.
Down on his luck following the death of his dog and an old coot he went Dumpster diving with, an overly dreadlocked homeless man (Ice-T) is hired by Rutger Hauer to be a hunting guide for him and his friends. The other hunters include Gary Busey, John C. McGinley and F. Murray Abraham, each tripping over the other in a rush to give the worst performance.
After an initial night of bonding in the cabin over a pork dinner — during which Busey repeatedly plays with a disembodied pig’s head, and you wonder if that was scripted — Ice-T gets a rude awakening (literally) as he learns he — not wild animals — is the intended prey. Despite the miles and miles of forest around them and not having hunting dogs, they always manage to know right where he is. After running for a while, Ice-T decides to turn the tables on them, and you can pretty much guess what happens from there. It involves little more than rock-throwing, rigging vehicles, jumping from trees and uttering bad quips.
Nutjob Busey has the film’s unintentionally greatest scene, giving a long speech about the time he wrestled a dog to the death, and he can’t get through a line of dialogue without throwing in an onomatopoeia. As Abraham’s son, William McNamara screams like a girl through the entire thing. The entire film is a hokey mess, with an utterly abbreviated ending (and unfortunately drawn-out beginning). —Rod Lott
AVENGING FORCE was such a better riff on similar themes.