Game 6 stars Michael Keaton as a Boston Red Sox fan, a lifelong pessimist whose encounters with failure after failure have caused him to live a life that thrives on the Sox losing. Even though I lost interest in the baseball world back when the late, great Kirby Puckett left the Minnesota Twins, I can still understand the impact the notorious sixth game of the 1986 World Series had on Boston Red Sox fans. For many, the game was another nail in the coffin, one more instance of the Sox's then-infamous history of raising the fans' collective hopes and coming dangerously close to breaking the curse of the Bambino -- only to dash them to the rocks in a wave of glorious disappointment.

Playwright Nicky Rogan (Keaton) isn't having a good streak when it comes to his personal life. His impending divorce threatens to evolve into one ugly mess. His latest play may sink, due not only to the forgetful lead actor (Harris Yulin) but also to a potential negative review by a reclusive Broadway critic (Robert Downey Jr.) whose legendary notices are said to have destroyed careers. To make matters worse, all of this is happening on October 25, 1986 -- the night of game six of the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets. The Sox are up 3-2 in the games, but knowing their past history, loss is a foregone conclusion (and, as a couple of characters say, "If they lose tonight, they lose tomorrow."). For some reason, Nicky can't seem to make up his mind about whether to head down to a local bar and watch Game 6 on TV or attend the opening night of his new production. Either way, he faces potential failure, and it's up to him to decide where he stands before his personal demons take hold of him any further.

Game 6 is a film about living with the feeling of not only having failed in life but having failed spectacularly. Keaton's Nicky Rogan is a guy who's been beaten down by the world to the point of feeling numb to the pain, gliding through a day that involves dealing with a bitter divorce, visiting a dad who might be losing his mind, and seriously pondering the decision of whether to be at his play and face the consequences of a bad review or to watch his favorite team in a game he feels they're going to lose anyway. But the magic behind Game 6 -- besides Keaton crafting Nicky into an intriguing enough figure to follow -- is that the story doesn’t drown in the sort of looming sadness that could easily sink such a modest production with big-time names involved. The film is never depressing for the sake of being so. Instead, it tells its story with wit, realism, and a few nice strokes of dark comedy, inciting drama and suspense not from what happens to Nicky but by how he reacts to these situations. The movie shows how he's grown comfortable knowing what happens next in his world is going to be terrible -- until he gets to a point where the fate of his universe is unknown.

Nicky’s dialogue helps, but what makes him click in the end is Keaton's strong interpretation of a complex character. (Keaton reminds us here why he made an awesome Batman: it was his acting chops, not because he fit in those tights so well.) His fellow actors, though, come up with more mixed results. Griffin Dunne is absolutely on-key as Elliott Litvak, a fellow playwright and friend of Nicky's who once got a damaging write-up from the infamous critic and now seems to wander the streets talking to Nicky whenever he's not covertly scrounging through dumpsters. Yulin's role is small but effective, and Robert Downey Jr., despite lack of enough screen time to beef up his part, blesses his role of the critic with his own quirky flair. However, getting the shaft on screen time hurts some of the other players, such as Bebe Neuwirth as Nicky's paramour/financier, and Catherine O'Hara as Nicky's soon-to-be-ex, who are on for all of six minutes collectively and hardly get a chance to let the viewers know they're a part of the cast. Also, next to nothing is done to transplant the viewers from the present day to 1986, and some of the dialogue, including Nicky's conversations with New York cabbies from various nations, seems a little too artsy.

Character-driven films dependent on the quality of the performances are a rare thing these days, so Game 6 is a movie worth embracing. It draws metaphors for life without beating you over the head with them, lasts only a short while (barely scraping the 80-minute mark) but is constructive with its time, and coaxes some solid performances from great actors you may have thought ended up falling by the wayside. Game 6 isn't quite a home run, but it's a deft, well-constructed film with all its bases loaded.

MY RATING: *** (out of ****)

(Released by Hart Sharp Video and rated “R” for some language and sexuality.)