Surviving the Game

Surviving the Game is a 1994 American action-adventure film directed by Ernest R. Dickerson. It is loosely based on the 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell. The film stars Ice-T, Rutger Hauer, Charles S. Dutton, John C. McGinley, William McNamara, Gary Busey, and F. Murray Abraham. Surviving the Game was released in the United States on April 15, 1994, by New Line Cinema. The film received negative reviews from critics and was a box office bomb, grossing $7.7 million against a production budget of $7.4 million (not including advertisement and distribution costs). Plot Jack Mason is a homeless man from Seattle, Washington who loses his only friends—Hank, a fellow homeless man and his pet dog—on the same day. Dejected, Mason attempts to commit suicide when a soup kitchen worker, Walter Cole, saves him. Cole refers him to businessman Thomas Burns, who kindly offers Mason a job as a hunting guide. Despite his misgivings, the lure of a well paying job causes Mason to accept. Flying to a remote cabin surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods, Mason meets the rest of the hunting party, all of whom paid $50,000 for the privilege of being there. In addition to Burns and Cole, the party includes Doc Hawkins, the founder of the hunt and a psychopathic psychiatrist who specializes in psychological assessments, Texas "oil man" John Griffin, and wealthy Wall Street executive Derek Wolfe Sr. and his son Derek Wolfe Jr., the latter of whom is at first unaware of the true purposes of the hunt. On the first night, all the men are eating a nice dinner and engaging in conversation. Mason receives a pack of cigarettes from Hawkins and learns a little about his past. Hawkins relays a brutal story from his childhood when his father forced him to fight and kill his dog as a lesson in being a man.