Review

The Player is a trenchant black comedy about a young film studio executive named Griffin Mill (played with unnerving restraint by Robbins) who finds his fax-filled, mineral water-drinking, Range Rover-driving life coming apart after he receives death threats from a screenwriter he has shunned. As he dives deeper into paranoia, we learn more and more about an industry that thrives on schmoozing, back-stabbing and green-lighting multimillion dollar projects that are pitched in 25 words or less. With Robbins, one of today's finest natural actors, in the lead, and a brilliant, pointedly satiric script by Michael Tolkin, who adapted his own cult novel, The Player marks the return to power of its iconoclast director Altman. There's also the miraculous supporting cast, and then there are the cameos -- scores of them -- from the likes of Cher, Lily Tomlin, Jack Lemmon and others too numerous, and too revealing, to name. A sublime movie-going experience, The Player is filled with cinematic jazz riffs that transcend all expectations.