August 1999

Fair Game
Reviewed by Doug Schneider
DVD Format

Overall Enjoyment:
Picture Quality:
Sound Quality:
Packaged Extras:

Starring Cindy Crawford, William Baldwin, Salma Hayek

Directed by Andrew Sipes

Theatrical Release: 1995
DVD Release: 1999
Dolby Digital Surround 5.1
Full Screen

I walked to the front of the checkout line and the store clerk looked at me as if to say, "Are you serious?" 

Why I felt the need to say anything back to him at all is anyone's guess.  Perhaps it was to save my dignity and reputation as a purchaser of only good movies. So I searched, and failed, to find a reasonable excuse for this purchase. Could I lie and say I was buying it solely for the budget price tag? It was at least part of the reason; $15 is pretty good for a DVD. Naw, he wouldn't believe it. In the end, I had to admit that there was no good excuse. Truth be told, there is no real reason to watch this movie other than Cindy Crawford, who stars in Fair Game in her only significant movie role to date. An hour and a half of Cindy is, to these eyes, worth 15 bucks no matter how bad the role, no matter how bad the movie. It may even be worth 25. Besides, there is an added bonus I hadn't realized until I cued the movie up -- Salma Hayek is in it too, but sadly for only the first 15 minutes.

The threadbare, cliché-ridden plot of Fair Game can be summarized quite quickly since we've seen it a number of times before -- and done many times better. Crawford is a young hotshot Florida lawyer being chased, but never quite caught, by Russian terrorists. William Baldwin plays one of those relationship-stressed, on-the-edge, tough-guy cops who happens upon the right place at the wrong time is and forced to serve and protect the speedy supermodel. Cindy gets to toss her hair to and fro, take numerous showers and bare her assets to check wounds that come startlingly close to vital organs. Baldwin proves once again that he's a second-hand leading man who must maintain a tough-guy face and inexplicably resist admitting any attraction to the lawyer who wears tank tops and mini skirts and can look oh-so-sexy lying back on the hood of a car. Then again, Hayek was his girlfriend for the first 15 minutes of the movie, so perhaps this explains his disaffection. The choices a movie cop has to make....

Fair Game is not totally awful, but it comes darn close. Despite having a reasonable budget and some star power attached, it lacks originality and creativity. The story is simply ho-hum and will only be really entertaining to those who have not been to a movie or seen TV in the last 20 years. To its credit, the editing is tight, and nonsensical scenes are not stretched out like they are in some similar movies. The whole film clocks in at less than 90 minutes. However, in the end, Fair Game is what I've come to describe as a sleepwalker movie: everyone involved just seems to be going through the motions hoping something will turn out right in the end.

To be fair to Cindy Crawford, when this was released in theaters, her performance was unjustly criticized as if she were to blame for the whole movie. While her acting is certainly not stellar, it is adequate and obviously superior to the skill of the director, screenwriter and whoever else in their wisdom thought this flick would fly. No, she's not an actress, but acting isn't really her day job. For the people behind this film, making movies is their vocation, and that's scary. 

There are no nasty visual artifacts and the colors appear properly rendered, but the DVD lacks film-like clarity and has numerous other flaws. At times it appears that there is a mist on the screen and there are even a couple scenes where there are definite marks in front of the image that you would find hard to believe were they on the original film. What's more, this is only available in full-screen (1.33:1 ratio) format. It's almost as if the DVD image was taken from a video copy intended for television broadcast or videotape. What's interesting is that while I was watching the DVD for the first time, the local TV station had the film on as the Sunday-night movie. I checked back and forth a few times and found that although the sound was obviously much better on the DVD, the video was not improved to nearly the same degree -- a little better, but not much. On the whole, the video quality of this DVD is among the poorest I've seen.

As for the sound, it's tastefully done and not excessive. It will exercise your subwoofer a bit and there is decent separation and detail. As for the packaged extras, like the video quality, they're dismal. The disc contains nothing more than dual languages (French and English) and scene selection. It doesn't even have a booklet you can pull out. However, I sat back and tried to think what else the makers could have included and came up with little. A bikini calendar?

Fair Game isn't really meant to tell a story. Despite some decent stunts and explosions, its best special effect is Cindy Crawford. For that, it does a decent job of showing her off. However, like the plot being better in countless other movies, Crawford has been on display in far better ways over the last decade or so. Still, for diehard fans of any Cindy sighting, Fair Game is worth watching, and that alone may make this movie worth owning, particularly when you factor in its low list price. For the rest of the world, it's fair game to say that this movie will be of little interest.

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