Watch End of the Game For Free

Powerful

Load of rubbish!!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I read Der Richter under Sein Henker in college German class and fell in love with it. Then we saw the German movie version, which was a dubbed version of End of the Game, and I was disappointed. Drastic changes from the source material. Anna's role has been plumped up to the point I scarcely recognized her. She appears only fleetingly in the book, is just the girlfriend of Schmied, and is more innocent. Different person pushed from the bridge. Novella is a great psychological drama; the movie is a bit a a mish-mash. After about 25 years I saw the English version of the film on TV. Book review: Wow! Movie review : Meh. It retains a shadow of the original. Maybe one day they'll do a proper adaptation.

It's based on Friedrich Durrenmatt's own crime novella, "The Judge and His Hangman" (1950). So if you've read Durrenmatt, you'll know he's sort of an absurdist like Samuel Beckett or Eugene Ionesco.I liked the film at the start, it's oddly weird, especially the funeral of Donald Sutherland with musical mourners and precipitation. It's hilarious. Another funny scene is when Donald Sutherland is being driven in a car by a Swiss cop and he keeps falling over in the seat.I think the problem ultimately is that the whole film seemed like some idiotic farce that was entirely pointless, and it threw it an "unexpected ending" type of denouement that was weak.Donald Sutherland is some cop who's found whacked in a car, and a Swiss Kommisar, played capably by Martin Ritt (American director, Hud (1963), The Molly Maguires (1970), Hombre (1967)) snoops around trying to find out who did it. He uses the aid of Jon Voight, who's another cop. Robert Shaw as "Gastmann" is an ominous character who may or may have not done the killing. There's plenty of fine acting and odd moments, good direction, but again, it gets bogged down too much in idiosyncratic reactions or convoluted conversations.Martin Ritt and Robert Shaw made some type of bet involving the death/murder of some woman both of them loved.Look for Friedrich Durrenmatt himself as some old "self-playing chess" crank who helps out Jon Voight.It's worth a look for all its faults.

Maximilian Schell directed, co-produced, and co-adapted this screenplay, based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt's book "The Judge and His Hangman", about a cunning murderer who began his crimes in 1940s Istanbul with the thrill-killing of his friend's girl; thirty years later in Switzerland, the friend is now a Commissioner who links his former acquaintance to the murder of a patrolman. Jon Voight plays an investigator who has an affair with the lover of the deceased, not knowing she's also involved with the criminal suspect. Martin Ritt and Robert Shaw are the adversaries, and both are exceptional, with Shaw (in a bald cap) glimmering with decadent evil. However, Voight (his accent on and off) and Jacqueline Bisset fail to come up with anything interesting, and neither is photographed well (both look white and pasty). The film's monotonous rhythm is helped occasionally by the punchy editing, but Schell seems to lose his grip on the narrative after the intriguing opening sequences. Some of the director's small, throwaway moments are best, but his grand gestures do not work at all. *1/2 from ****

My wife & I saw this as the second feature at a drive-in (yes, that long ago) and it has stayed with us long after we've forgotten the main feature that night. A marvelous game of cat & mouse between two chess-masters, with Voight as their pawn. We've looked for it on television, on tape and on DVD ever since, hoping to decide if it was as impressive as we thought. Schell's direction is superb, building and maintaining a constant tension throughout. The actors performances are, well, what you'd expect from these actors at the top of their game. Beginning with two young men circa WWII, one betting the other that he can get away with a murder, The End of the Game ranks with the best of Le Carre's work in its examination of a master detective's plot to finally catch his bete noir in a crime.