'Game of Silence' a Tired Plot

Turkish television can best be described as a mix between Greek tragedy and “Gossip Girl.” Unabashedly luxurious interiors mix with haute couture, and all throughout, the visual and emotional melodrama is grounded in strong, multifaceted characters. It is upon this tradition that “Game of Silence” enters. An NBC series based on the Turkish soap opera “Suskanlar” (which was in turn based off of the 1996 film “Sleepers”), “Game of Silence” explores themes of lost innocence, friendship, and justice. While the series offers fertile ground for arresting psychological portrayals and a good dose of intrigue, the writers eschew character development for a plot that can best be described as a Frankenblend of legal drama, telenovela, and revenge play. Less-than-stellar performances and often clumsy writing further plunge a promising drama into the realm of the insipid.

“Game of Silence” begins with Jackson (David Lyons) reminiscing about his childhood. He and his five friends are on an endless romp through small-town idyll, but after a rescue attempt nearly kills a woman, four of them are sent to juvenile prison. There, they suffer physical and psychological torture at the hands of the guards. It is at this point that Jackson delivers the kind of blundering comment that mars the promise of the plot: “We were like lambs to the slaughter.” This brand of ill-written wordplay proliferates in “Game of SIlence.” Other pithy sayings include “Fate, like life, is unpredictable” and “There are lies we tell ourselves to make us feel better about who we are.”

As uncreative as these lines are, they remain salvageable. Unfortunately, the cast of “Game of Silence” can barely handle dialogue, much less pick up the rubble left behind by a perfect storm of cliches. In an unplanned reunion, Jackson and Jessie (Bre Blair) try to convey chemistry, only to lapse into an unconvincing concoction of sideways looks and forced laughter. The other actors seem equally uncomfortable with each other, and without this engagement, the “let the good times roll” atmosphere feels more like an Applebee’s commercial than an old gang reunion. Unlike an Applebee’s commercial, however, the show lasts an entire painful hour. While the writing and actors provide no respite, the plot at this point is tantalizing enough to warrant the commitment.

Yet even this promising aspect is overdone, as it turns out that the prison warden who oversaw the boys’ abuse is now using drug dealing to finance a run for the Senate. The writers would have done better to leave the narco drama for the narco dramas, as this revelation marks the point at which the “Game of Silence” morphs into a jack-of-all-trades. The class contrasts inherent in this revelation are emblematic of those in the rest of the film: Jackson’s comfortable lifestyle seems almost decadent when compared to the working-class existences of his friends. But like the show’s other promising elements, this thread is not pursued.

Due to its disparate elements, “Game of Silence” misses the opportunity to connect with some of today’s most relevant themes, such as prison conditions, child abuse, and the justice system’s failure of rape victims. While viewers will certainly leave the show with goosebumps, they will not be caused by anything the show does right: instead, they will most likely be caused by cringeworthy metaphors and a plot so disparate that it calls to mind the grotesque more than the thrilling.

—Staff writer Hanaa J. Masalmeh can be reached at hanaa.masalmeh@thecrimson.com.