Fair Game (1995 film)


Fair Game is a 1995 American romantic action thriller film directed by Andrew Sipes. It stars Cindy Crawford as family law attorney Kate McQuean and William Baldwin as Max Kirkpatrick, a Florida police officer. Kirkpatrick ends up on the run to protect McQuean when she is targeted for murder by ex-members of the KGB with interests in a ship owned by a Cuban man who may lose it in a divorce case being pursued by McQuean.
The film is based on Paula Gosling's novel of the same title, which was previously adapted into the 1986 Sylvester Stallone film Cobra.
Locations used for the film included Coral Gables, Florida, Miami Beach, and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
Fair Game was panned by critics, and is a box office bomb.

Plot

Kathryn "Kate" McQuean is a Miami lawyer who, in the course of a divorce proceeding, attempts to seize a 157-foot freighter docked off the Florida coast in lieu of unpaid alimony.
The freighter, which is owned by criminal Emilio Juantorena, is the current base of operations of Ilya Pavel Kazak, a former KGB agent who has become an international money laundering expert, and has also become the leader of a group of rogue KGB members, including Stefan, Leonide "Hacker" Volkov, Navigator, Rosa and Zhukov.
When Kate is unintentionally hit by a stray bullet, Miami detective Max Kirkpatrick is assigned to the case. Then an attempt is made on Kate's life by Kazak, who — after killing Juantorena — assembles his team into tracking and killing Kate; Max then becomes her protector.
Kate, Max, and two of his colleagues stay at a hotel. They order pizza, but Volkov traces the order, and Rosa and two henchmen infiltrate the hotel and kill Max's colleagues. Max manages to kill the whole hit squad and he and Kate then leave. After Max contacts his superior, Lt. Meyerson, FBI agents are sent to escort them. The "agents" turn out to be henchmen working for Kazak, and Max's partner and long-time friend Detective Louis Aragon is killed in the process. After killing some of Kazak's men, Max and Kate travel throughout Florida, trying to avoid Kazak and find out why he wants Kate dead.
However, their jeep breaks down on a freeway and they call a tow truck to come pick them up. Volkov and Stefan show up to kill them, while Kazak splits from them to deal with Max's cousin, who has been feeding them information regarding Kazak and his past activities in Cuba. Kate and Max are forced to run with the tow truck while their jeep is still hooked onto it. After a long chase and gunfight, Kate steps hard on the brakes while Max steers the wheel of the truck, unhooking their car and causing it to crash into Volkov's and Stefan's SUV, killing both of them.
One of Kate's clients is the ex-wife of Emilio Juantorena, and she is trying to repossess the boat to pay for her divorce settlement. She stumbled on something about the ship and is the main reason why Kazak and his crew put a target on Kate.
Regardless, Kazak has kidnapped Kate and taken her to the freighter while Rosa and Zhukov are sent to kill Max. They accidentally kill the Navigator and Max shoots both of them. Rosa, however, has a bulletproof vest on, and Max only kills her after a long fight. Max then boards the freighter in an attempt to rescue Kate. Max and Kate blow up the freighter, killing Kazak. They jump off of the boat just in time to watch it blow up and sink. They climb aboard the boat Kirkpatrick used to reach the freighter and start to kiss passionately. As the sun sets they ride off together.

Cast

, Julianne Moore and Brooke Shields were all offered the role of Kate McQuean, but they all passed as they were busy with other projects, before Cindy Crawford was ultimately cast.
Initially, Fair Game ran for 95 minutes, but after re-edits and reshoots, the film came in four minutes shorter. After poor test screenings, Warner Bros. cut some scenes and reshot others. In the original version, Elizabeth Peña played the role of Rita, Max's ex-girlfriend, hence her name was included on the poster and the trailer. But when test audiences thought that Pena didn't seem right for the role, she was fired and Salma Hayek was brought in to replace her; Hayek said she took the part because she was allowed to rewrite the scenes she was in. Cindy Crawford and William Baldwin also shot additional scenes to help boost the relationship between their characters. Crawford also shot more scenes on her own in order to develop her character. Dan Hedaya had a bigger part in the original cut, but it was shortened to one scene and so he chose to go uncredited. The extra filming/additions and re-edit caused the film to be delayed by three months.
The theatrical trailer shows some deleted and alternate scenes cut from the original movie before it was partially re-shot and re-edited. For example, in the alternate interrogation scene, Kirkpatrick asks McQuean who's trying to kill her to which she responds that no one's trying to kill her. Also in an extended part of this scene, McQuean asks Kirkpatrick if he has problem with lawyers; he answers that he's a cop—that it's "written on the badge". There is also alternate dialogue between the two while they're driving in which he says that they can't trust the cops and when she asks him why she should trust him he says because he hasn't shot her, adding that the "night's still young". In an additional scene, he gives her a gun, she says she doesn't know how to shoot, but he says it's like taking a picture: just point and shoot. In another added scene, Kirkpatrick asks McQuean if she'll hit him—she says "night's still young", his line in the deleted scene from the trailer.

Reception

Box office

Fair Game is considered to be a box office bomb, grossing only US$11.5 million against production budget of $50 million.

Critical response

Fair Game was panned by critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 12% approval rating based on 25 reviews, with an average score of 2.4/10. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.
Most critics singled out Crawford's poor acting, with Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail saying that "One could scavenge the thesaurus to find synonyms for 'awkward' to describe Crawford's performance."
It was nominated for three Razzie Awards, for Worst Actress, Worst New Star and Worst Screen Couple, where it lost all of these categories to Showgirls. Crawford was also nominated for Worst Actress at the 1995 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards but lost to Julia Sweeney for It's Pat.
In 2013, Cindy Crawford said she doesn't regret doing Fair Game: "I knew a producer named Joel Silver and he asked me to do a movie for him and I was like, 'Joel, I'm not an actress, I don't want to be an actress.' And he was like, 'I really want you to do this movie, you're doing this movie.' And I kept saying, 'No, no, no,' and he kept saying, 'How much more money?' And at a certain point I was like, 'I'm an idiot if I don't do it'. I should have been more focused on who the director was than what kind of trailer I got because... after the third week he stopped speaking to anyone on the set. It was difficult because here I am, I'm not an actress, and literally would get zero direction. It wasn't the worst movie ever made, I've certainly seen worse, but it just didn't do well and people weren't that impressed with my performance."