Entertainment

CLAUS FOR ALARM

REINDEER GAMESThis brain-dead, Christmas-themed thriller piles on one unbelievable plot twist after another, and director John Frankenheimer can do little but keep things moving. Ben Affleck is absurdly miscast as an ex-con who’s drawn into a casino heist plot by a mysterious woman (Charlize Theron) and her brother (Gary Sinise).Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R. At 42nd Street E-Walk, Lincoln Square, Kips Bay, others.

‘REINDEER Games” opens with an image of a dead Santa Claus lying on the hood of a car.How apt: This Christmas-themed thriller is brain dead on arrival, a full two months after the holiday. Bah, humbug, indeed.

There’s nothing quite as dispiriting as listening to Ben Affleck’s a capella rendition of “The Little Drummer Boy” in late February — unless it’s a script that piles on ridiculous plot twists like so many discarded Christmas trees.

More naughty than nice is the severe miscasting of the boyish, clean-cut Affleck as Rudy, a tough ex-con who’s released from Michigan prison after a stretch for auto theft.

Rudy impulsively decides to pass himself as his cellmate, Nick — a murderer who had been corresponding for months with a beautiful young stranger named Ashley (Charlize Theron) before his demise in a prison riot just before his impending release.

Rudy and Ashley (who demonstrate less sexual chemistry than Mr. and Mrs. Claus) no sooner finish making love to the accompaniment of Dean Martin’s “Let It Snow” in a motel room, when in bursts her psychotic truck-driver brother Gabriel (Gary Sinise).

Gabriel intends to force Rudy, who he thinks is Nick, to help him use his supposed inside knowledge to plot a heist at a casino on an Indian reservation where Nick used to work as a security guard.

Scriptwriter Ehren Kruger (“Arlington Road, “Scream 3”) comes up with ever-more desperate contrivances to explain why (1) Rudy can’t prove his real identity, (2) Rudy can’t get away from Gabriel and his gang and (3) Gabriel doesn’t kill Rudy as soon as he gets the information he’s seeking.

Affleck, so impressive in “Boiler Room,” flounders badly between wisecracks (“I had better sex in prison,” he complains at one point to Theron) and masochism as Rudy, who endures a dip in a freezing lake and serves as a human dart-board for Gabriel.

The beautiful but bland Theron (“The Cider House Rules”) isn’t remotely convincing as the kind of woman who would send love letters to a murderer in prison, much less one with the absurd secrets revealed in the movie’s home stretch.

Sinise, sporting a Charles Manson hairstyle, is way overqualified to play Gabriel, a barely one-dimensional character. The only performance of note is the underrated Denis Farina, who generates most of the movie’s intentional laughs as a casino manager.

The legendary John Frankenheimer (“The Manchurian Candidate” and, more recently, “Ronin”) directs at a furious pace, staging vigorous action sequences and deploying his wintry Canadian locations with great expertise.

But in the end, it’s a waste of effort.

Without any believable characters or situations, “Reindeer Games” is about as appealing as leftover Christmas fruitcake.