While shooting a movie in Los Angeles about the abused wife Sarah Jennings (Madonna) that has converted to Christian and her husband Francis Burns (James Russo) that misses their orgies, the New Yorker director Eddie Israel (Harvey Keitel) pushes his lead actor and actress to the edge affecting their real lives. Eddie has one brief affair with Sarah but he feels also affected by his work and confesses the truth about his many infidelities to his wife Mad Israel (Nancy Ferrara),blurring fiction and reality and destroying his marriage.

"Dangerous Game" is a sort of experimental "movie within a movie" showing a parallel journey to hell of the character, lead actor and director blended with sex, drugs and booze. The result is a strange and unpleasant movie but very well acted, especially by Madonna that has a magnificent and very convincing performance. It is not entertaining and certainly not the best film of Abel Ferrara, but for fans like me it is worthwhile watching it. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Olhos de Serpente" ("Eyes of Snake")

Unappetizing wallow has impassioned movie-director Harvey Keitel guiding an actor and actress through the rigors of filming a psychological drama about an obsessive-compulsive, coke-snorting sadist and his victimized wife. Originally titled "Snake Eyes", this messy picture hopes to tread that surreal line between movie-art and life-imitating-art, but it ain't "The French Lieutenent's Woman". Madonna, whose company Maverick produced the pic, is battered around and continually abused, yet manages to show flickers of focus and credibility as an actress that haven't always been apparent in her star-vehicles. Director Abel Ferrara has obviously managed to gain the trust of his entire cast, but his artifices combined with theirs is a deadly match. The film-within-the-film is nasty and off-putting, with sinewy James Russo taking method acting to an all-new low (which is partly Ferrara's fault, he's not a filmmaker interested in nuances). The movie does indeed go for broke, yet the whole thing is pointlessly broad and loud, and eventually just tiresome. *1/2 from ****

This one is not your typical Hollywood fare. Emotionally gripping and confronting, "Dangerous Game" cuts to the core of human nature and our search for answers and meaning. Abel Ferrara's exploration of our desires, fears, and failings rings painfully true. Starring Madonna (don't let that put you off) Harvey Keitel and James Russo, and directed by Abel Ferrara, this is an interesting psychological drama about a directors obsession with his film, and the stars breakdown of reality during their making of it. This film is filmed like a documentary about the actors in their film how they get on or not get on you will have to watch it to get the benefit, my description is not fulfilling the content of the film very well.

Madonna and Harvey Keitel are extremely good on their roles, and Madonna is actually able to prove that she can be very good if the role is good enough. She delivers a sincere performance about an actress too embroiled in the characters she plays. Along with the legendary Harvey Keitel, the cast does an amazing job portraying the seedy underbelly of the film industry, using what appears to be old- school method acting. Possibly the best Madonna performance in a movie ever! Such a shame her acting didn't continue along this road. She's actually very credible in this and years later, the movie itself seems much more cohesive than it was upon first viewing.

Overall rating: 8 out of 10.