Movie : Only Ice-T Up to ‘Surviving’

If you have the feeling you’ve already seen “Surviving the Game” you may very well have, for it’s basically the same story as “Hard Target.” That film may not have been top-drawer John Woo, but alongside “Surviving the Game,” it’s a masterpiece.

Eric Bernt’s hopeless script spends an incredible 37 minutes to set up an action picture that runs only 96 minutes. Worse yet, we can see what the film’s hero, a Seattle homeless man played by Ice-T, is getting into long before he can. Apparently having lost his wife and child in some kind of fire for which he somehow holds himself responsible and now having just had his boozy sidekick Jeff Corey and his dog die on him, he throws himself in front of a truck but is saved by Charles S. Dutton’s forceful homeless shelter volunteer.

Dutton is no ordinary do-gooder. He’s in a partnership with a steely Rutger Hauer in Hell’s Canyon Outfitters, which charges its clients a whopping $50,000 each to join its very special hunting expeditions in the Northwestern wilderness. (At least the film has gorgeous scenery.)

You’d think a guy as wary as Ice-T’s Jack Mason has been established to be would be a tad suspicious when, despite having no experience whatsoever, he’s offered the job of hunting guide. It cannot come as a shock to you when eventually Hauer, pointing a gun at him, tells him, “We’re the hunters, you’re the hunted.”

The film’s remaining 59 minutes are ultra-violent and entirely predictable as Mason is given a sportsmanly head start in his run for life by a bunch of sickos, which include Gary Busey, F. Murray Abraham and John McGinley. There’s more than a hint that if Hauer and company are successful in capturing Ice-T, they’ll roast him for dinner.

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It is exceedingly hard to understand why Spike Lee’s great cameraman Ernest Dickerson, in his second outing as a director--his first was the uneven but promising “Juice”--was attracted to such trite material, which his direction frankly makes all the more obvious. Ironically, Ice-T, in only his fourth feature, holds on to his cool and carries the picture while most everyone else hams it up. If you’re in the mood for a good running-the-gauntlet movie, you’re better off renting Cornel Wilde’s classic “The Naked Prey” (1966).

* MPAA rating: R, for strong violence and language. Times guidelines: Incessant graphic and mindless bloodshed and brutality rules this one out for children.

‘Surviving the Game’

Ice-T: Mason

Rutger Hauer: Burns

Charles S. Dutton: Cole

Gary Busey: Hawkins

F. Murray Abraham: Wolfe Sr.

John C. McGinley: Griffin

William McNamara: Wolfe Jr.

A New Line presentation. Director Ernest Dickerson. Producer David Permut. Executive producer Kevin J. Messick. Screenplay by Eric Bernt. Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli. Editor Sam Pollard. Costumes Ruth Carter. Music Stewart Copeland. Production designer Christiaan Wagener. Art director Madelyne Marcom. Set decorator George Toomer Jr. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.