Playing a winning full house
Rounders A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1998 By Michael Redman
*** (Out of ****)
"We cannot run away from who we are. Our destiny chooses us," explains Professor Petrovsky to law student Mike McDermott.
If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on half the people reading that statement thinking "Great, bring it on!" And the other half saying "Oh God, no! Anything but this!"
The notion that fundamentally we are who we are and nothing we can do will change that is both comforting and frightening. How dismaying it is that we might be fated for a role in life and yet how inviting it would be just settle into who we are and quit fighting it.
McDermott (Matt Damon) is a poker player. No matter how much he wants to be something else, he is a genius at the game. When he loses his $30,000 life savings in one hand to KGB Teddy (John Malkovich), he begins to doubt his chosen profession.
A few months later, we catch up with Mike who has hung up his deck of cards and is driving a delivery truck to put himself through law school. He's doing well although his live-in girlfriend Jo (Gretchen Mol) is constantly suspicious that he'll return to his addiction. Mike is living the straight and narrow until his childhood buddy Worm (Edward Norton) gets out of prison and guilts him into returning to The Game.
Although Worm was a stand-up guy while they were growing up and didn't rat out Mike when they got into big trouble, he's a something of a sleezoid. Where Mike is a master at the psychological game, Worm is a "mechanic", manipulating the cards and dealing off the bottom. In short order, he's racked up a $7,000 debt in Mike's name, gotten him into danger from violent gangster Grama (Michael Rispoli) and beat up by dozens of state cops.
Focusing on immediate problems, Mike screws up his potential law career showing up for moot court completely unprepared. Jo is disgusted that he's gone back to gambling and moves out. Unless he comes up with a huge wad of cash in a couple of days, Grama and KGB Teddy are going to kill him.
Things are not looking good.
The inside look at high-stakes poker is fascinating. From the posh Las Vegas World Series Of Poker to the paint pealing walls of New York game rooms hidden behind locked metal doors, we get a glimpse of a world that most of the audience have never seen. Director John Dahl ("The Last Seduction") has wisely chosen not to dumb-down the scenes for those of us who are only acquainted with the penny-ante version of the pasteboards. Often voice-over narration only tells us what we already know, but in this case Damon's explanations work well as a map to a foreign world.
Mike maintains that poker is a game of skill rather than luck. He plays the man, not the cards. An expert at picking up the little physical "tells" that reveal what a player has and knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em, he fleeces the flock faster than most people could deal a hand of five-card stud.
But the gambler has an ego problem. After a big game when he has all the money he needs to re-pay Worm's debts and then some, he can't resist one more round for everything. Gambler's Anonymous is going to have a problem with this film.
The movie is jammed with first-rate actors and the film's defects are salvaged by their performances. Damon is as easy to like as he was in "Good Will Hunting", partially because he plays essentially the same character having to choose between school and the seamier side of life. Norton's quirky and nervous Worm is a Sean Penn role and he plays it as well as Penn ever could. Malkovich is hilarious as the Russian mob-connected poker player with one of the thickest accents around. Martin Landau has a small but pivotal role as Mike's professor and is a pleasure to watch.
Under-used is John Turturro as Joey Knish. Knish is the opposite of Mike. He plays poker to pay his alimony and child support rather than for the thrill of victory. Turturro is wonderful and I kept wishing for more screen time.
This is definitely a film about men. The women seem tossed in as an after thought and are as well fleshed-out as Barbie dolls. Mol's Jo is little more than a nag from the beginning. Famke Janssen as Petra, operator of a poker room, has potential but a very minor role.
When the camera leaves the poker table, the film has some problems. Everyone is telling everyone else how to live their lives. Jo demands that Mike not gamble. Mike insists that Worm do things his way. Knish advises Mike on the true path. Petrovsky informs Mike on the way things work. Grama lays out the rules.
As believable as the interaction between the characters is, their relationships are lacking. Mike and Jo are never shown doing anything but bickering. Their relationship exists only to provide the obligatory love interest. He seems as unaffected by their break-up as he is by his academic problems. Mike and Worm are pals, but their friendship is never really resolved.
Although the movie is flawed, I'll lay you ten-to-one that the atmospheric subculture of high-stakes gambling will be as enticing to you as it is to me. I'm ready to pack up my $34 life savings and head to the tables.
(Michael Redman has written this column for over 23 years and he just found two more dollars to play poker with but he still can't remember if a flush beats a straight. Email the answer to Redman@indepen.com.)
[This appeared in the 9/17/98 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com.] -- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review at http://www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman
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