Customer Reviews

The Player

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's a good story, but it's basically a skeleton of what would become Robert Altman's kaleidoscopic adaptation, filled with blink and you'll miss it cameos and references Tolkin's novel feels too heavy and it also lacks the humor present in the film. If you want to read some great Michael Tolkin, go to his sophomore novel, the powerful 'Against the Air', or his wonderful "L.A. Yuppie" trilogy of screenplays.

This novel is tiresome, overwritten and shoddy. It makes that mediocre movie of the same name look like a work of genius.

For what it's worth, the most entertaining part of the novel is watching Griffin Mill lie. It's amusing, not laugh out-loud funny. The book becomes tiresome because the writer clearly hasn't thought out the story very well (Tolkin writes screenplays; screenwriters make bad novelists. I wonder how much Robert Altman contributed to his Oscar-nominated screenplay which is nothing like this trash).

If you want a book to make you annoyed, buy this.

Loved the movie, left flat by the book. I grasped the irony, but was bored by the sense of superiority, thought the writer's actions unbelievable, found the murder incomprehensible, and left uneasy about the relationship with June. About the only emotion to which I could relate was the paranoia about the possible arrest. The screenwriter had the sense to focus on that last emotion. I'd have liked the book better if Tolkin had done more of the same.

This is the book on which the Altman movie is based, and it has quite the Patricia Highsmith feel: News flash -- sometimes the bad guys win and don't even feel bad about it.

Griffin, a movie executive, is being sent vaguely threatening postcards, apparently by a disappointed and disgruntled screenwriter. To atone -- sort of -- he picks a screenwriter at random whom he met with and goes to see him at a screening of The Bicycle Thief. He figures if he makes a big effort to placate one guy, in some karmic way he will placate the postcard writer, too. This makes weird sense in the book. Anyway, for no reason (shades of The Stranger) beyond imitation and because he can -- he ends up committing a murder.

The main character is curiously amoral, and seems not to consider the effects of his actions on others. At the same time, he is a heck of an observer, not only of others but of himself, of the little games and mood shifts, the political one upsmanship, that to some extent defines daily life. It seems that games and observations on the most superficial level are all there are for him.

why has no one else reviewed this book..? a modern-day "double indemnity" is what it is... perfect...