Surviving the Game (1994) from Scream Factory

[oh_riginal]

Originally Posted by Filmmaker

Yeah, it’s wild to discover the monologue wasn’t in the script or planned at all, which would have rendered Gary Busey’s character almost superfluous (shocking how far down one can fall 15 years removed from an Academy Award nomination), but he begged the director to let him just give his idea a try and, BAM!, created a moment that momentarily, impossibly elevated SURVIVING THE GAME, a (admittedly great) B-grade movie by any other metric, into the stratum of A-grade cinema. The scuttlebutt is that Rutger Hauer was pissed about the monologue because he saw it as Busey wresting the audience’s attention from Hauer and, frankly, he’s not wrong. Rutger is great in the movie, but Busey’s monologue is what stays with you weeks, months, years later when you reminisce about the film.

It definitely gives the film more of an ensemble feeling, which is something I appreciated so much. It could have easily ended up summed up as “Ice T vs. Rutger Hauer & His Buddies” but almost every character gets a chance to shine in their villainy, with exception to the son since that actor was clearly out of his league being lined up with this great of a cast.