House of Games

Released 1987
Stars Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mantegna, Mike Nussbaum, Lilia Skala, J. T. Walsh, Jack Wallace
Directed by David Mamet

A near miss. That’s how you can best characterize psychiatrist Margaret Ford’s (Lindsay Crouse) attempts at reassuring a troubled patient. The guy’s in debt $25,000 and the gambler to whom he owes the money has threatened to kill him, so her failure is no great surprise. Unfortunately, ‘near miss’ also sums up House of Cards, a smart and fascinating yarn about obsession and deceit that loses credibility along the way, tarnishing what would otherwise be a really fun film.

Margaret is a best-selling author who has written about obsession and compulsion. When she confronts the gambler whose threats have traumatized her patient, she finds that Mike (Joe Mantegna) is a charming schemer who works with his cohorts to pull off elaborate scams. First Margaret is hostile; then she’s fascinated; then she’s falling for Mike, who agrees to show her some of his best tricks. Margaret’s only problem is that she can’t tell what’s real and what’s just another layer of deceit. Soon, the obsession of the expert on obsession is to be part of the scam, even if she can’t be certain exactly where it begins and ends.

Summary by Brian Webster

I have to say David Mamet's directorial debut was a major disappointment to me. The worst part was the terrible acting--most notably Lindsay Crouse (Mamet's wife). If she had been any more wooden, she could have played Pinocchio. I mean she was baaaaaaaaad. Her lowest moment was when she was having a session with the convicted killer in the mental hospital, and she pounced on every word the patient was able to painfully bring forth. Psychiatrists need to nurture their patients to draw things from them, not make them feel like they're being interrogated. Didn't Mamet and Crouse know this? It was obviously done intentionally, and it made my skin crawl. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if the patient's performance hadn't been as weak as Crouse's. The two of them together looked like community theater rejects.

It's a shame the acting was so poor, because the plot was relatively strong. There were good cons, and we got to see them in action from the rube's viewpoint. Unfortunately my wife and I figured out the big con long before we should have, but that may have been because we watched it 15 years after it was released. Most thrillers don't seem to age too well, since the plot devices they rely on get ripped off and become overused. As far as the ending is concerned, I have to give Mamet some credit for trying to come up with an original one, but I didn't think it worked. We were supposed to believe the final con drew enough of Margaret's suppressed feelings to the surface that she could kill someone in cold blood, but I didn't buy it. I would have been able to accept it if she had been remorseful, but she was gleeful. I didn't buy that for a second. --Bill Alward, March 29, 2002