Lake County News,California

: Tim Riley; Posted On Saturday, 03 March 2018 23:55; 03 March 2018

‘Game Night’ plays well for comedy; ‘Looming Tower’ on TV

GAME NIGHT (Rated R)

Not only is there a great cast for “Game Night,” the creative team of Mark Perez, screenwriter, and co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein are essential for the delivery of sharp dialogue and general absurdity in a comedy shot like an action thriller.

It is probably revealing that the co-directors were part of the screenwriting team behind “Horrible Bosses,” and it’s seems only fitting that Jason Bateman has a starring role once again as a middle-class suburbanite soon to be up to his neck in unexpected intrigue.

Happily married, Bateman’s Max and his wife Annie (Rachel McAdams) are well-matched for their competitive spirit, which extends to hosting weekly game nights with four friends at their nice, upscale cul-de-sac home in a quiet neighborhood.

The unexpected visit of Max’s jet-setting older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) creates some tension. Brooks decides to upstage his sibling by hosting at his rented mansion a murder mystery party, complete with fake thugs and faux federal agents.

When Brooks is kidnapped in what looks uncannily realistic, the six party guests believe it’s an elaborate game that they must set out to solve and win, but the only problem is that an actual crime has taken place.

Besides Max and Annie, the husband and wife team of Kevin and Michelle (Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury) get tangled up with Kevin’s obsession that his wife might have been unfaithful with a well-known celebrity.

Joining the group is the dimwitted playboy Ryan (Billy Magnussen), who usually brings as a guest his latest vacuous bimbo. This time, though, he has an improbable date with Sarah (Sharon Horgan) whose IQ is probably up nearly triple digits on his.

Over the course of one chaotic night, the friends find themselves increasingly in over their heads as each twist leads to another unexpected turn. Of course, as spirited gamers, Max and Annie are so deep into the game they are hilariously oblivious to real danger.

Making a weird comic presence as an outsider is next-door neighbor Gary (Jesse Plemons), a dour, blank-eyed cop who wants to be invited back to game night even though he’s now divorced and lives alone with his snow-white terrier Sebastian.

“Game Night” is a boisterously funny and inventive comedy that fires on all cylinders. And to boot, it has the best impersonator of Denzel Washington (be sure to stay for the end credits).

‘THE LOOMING TOWER’ ON HULU

Inspired by the actual events of Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book “The Looming Tower,” Hulu delivers a compelling ten-episode titular limited series about the rising threat of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the late 1990s.

Every episode has a disclaimer wherein “The Looming Tower” notes that certain characters and incidents, among other things, were fictionalized or composited for dramatic purposes. Nevertheless, the end product is riveting.

During the winter TV press tour, executive producer Alex Gibney acknowledged that creating a compelling drama requires some license but the success and failure of the federal agencies involved are “pretty accurately presented in the main.”

For those who followed the events after 9/11, it became all too obvious that intelligence agencies failed to properly coordinate their efforts to track the terrorists who planned to attack America.

Though the action starts at a time when distractions took place during President Clinton’s unfolding Monica Lewinsky scandal, there are jumps to the 9/11 inquiry in 2004, underscoring the concerns about lapses in the ability to prevent the jetliner hijackings.

The head of the FBI’S New York counter-terrorism unit, John O’Neill (Jeff Daniels), often belligerent even with superiors, was a central figure in the hunt for bin Laden, particularly in connection with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The clash between the FBI and CIA was no more intense than the prickly relationship O’Neill had with Martin Schmidt (Peter Sarsgaard), a composite figure in the CIA’s counter-terrorism unit, who borders on being obstructionist in the sharing of information.

For all his bluster and indiscretions, O’Neill fares better than others in this drama as it appears he was most prescient in being rightly convinced that the United States was headed to a nasty confrontation with pure evil.

The gruff chief of the New York FBI squad also got plenty of help from young Lebanese-American Muslim FBI agent Ali Soufan (Tahar Rahim), one of the few agents capable of speaking Arabic and thus, a key player.

The three years leading up to 9/11 are fraught with signs of impending terrorism, and the antagonistic Schmidt holds on tight to the knowledge that known al-Qaeda members have entered in the United States.

Above all, “The Looming Tower” is a political thriller that veers from tense intelligence briefings heavy on crisp and biting dialogue to action in the field in places as diverse as Albania, Pakistan and East African nations.

What transpires in “The Looming Tower,” even when dramatized for maximum effect, is so gripping that every episode should be eagerly anticipated.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.