ROUNDERS
Starring Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Gretchen Mol, John Turturro and John = Malkovich
Written by David Levient and Brian Koppelman
Directed by John Dahl
"If you can't spot the sucker at the table in the first half hour, then you are the sucker," intones Mike McDermott (Matt Damon), the tough-yet-sensitive card shark who narrates his own tale of greed and gambling in John Dahl's ROUNDERS. Good advice, considering I've never spotted the sucker in a poker game myself, and typical of the nuggets of wisdom the screenplay sprinkles along the way. ROUNDERS tries hard to draw you into its world of illicit big-money poker games held in the back alleys and dank basements of New York City. It tries to dazzle you with the torrent of poker slang flowing from the lips of sweaty card players who study one another's facial ticks through a haze of murky cigar smoke. It wants you to succumb to the allure of high-stakes poker, to feel the naked adrenaline rush of letting your bankroll ride on the promise of a full boat. The film tries so hard that you can't help but root for it. But I'm here to tell you that it just didn't happen for me. For all its finely honed performances and the dizzying energy of its dialogue, ROUNDERS is ultimately a con job- smoke and mirrors hiding weak characters and a derivative, predictable story.
Mike is a law student working his way through school as a truck driver after losing a giant wad of cash in a single hand to a seedy Russian gangster named Teddy KGB (John Malkovich). As the story opens, He seems to have life well in hand- he has a kindly judge for a mentor (Martin Landau), and a live-in girlfriend (Gretchen Mol) who is so beautiful and intelligent that she's not only out of your league, she's also out of the leagues of everyone you know.
But the good times never last. Out of prison steps Worm (Edward Norton), Mike's best friend from his rounding days. Worm, the proverbial loose cannon, leaves lockup under a mountain of gambling debt and is eager to get back to the business of playing cards. Mike makes the mistake of vouching for Worm at the local tables. Before he knows what hits him, he learns that Worm has racked up 25 G's in debt to Teddy KGB- and the juice is running every day. There is nothing for it but for Mike to assume Worm's debt and re-enter the life. He must win large, win clean, and try to forget the fatal hand against Teddy KGB that sent him skulking home with his tail between his legs.
Much is made of the core relationship between Mike and Worm. To Mike, gambling is an art. He has spent a lifetime honing his craft, and dreams of one day facing off against the best in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Worm, on the other hand, is a grifter who never passes on a chance to fleece a sucker, and takes chances that could get him killed. Will Mike's blind loyalty to his reckless friend finally put his own life at risk? You betcha. Damon and Norton, gifted actors both, sell this relationship for all it's worth. The problem is that we've seen these two guys before, in other films. There's Denzel Washington and Spike Lee in MO' BETTER BLUES; Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci in GOODFELLAS; Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in MIDNIGHT COWBOY. The good-hearted anti-hero and his self-destructive alter-ego are classic cinema archetypes, and any film that dares trot them out had better dress them up in some new clothes. Gritty realism and gambling nomenclature notwithstanding, Mike and Worm tell a well-worn tale.
The rest of the film is a hit-or-miss affair. Gretchen Mol is saddled with playing a cardboard girlfriend who suffers from the laughable delusion that the Law is somehow a more noble pursuit than professional gambling. John Turturro has a memorable cameo as a "grinder", poker slang for a player who ekes out a living by folding repeatedly until a winning hand turns up. And what can I say about Jon Malkovich? His performance is either brilliant or astoundingly bad- I can't decide which. He affects a nearly incomprehensible Russian accent which makes him sound like Boris Badinoff on Nitrous Oxide. Toning it down a bit would have been a wise move, but Dahl lets him roll. I did, however, enjoy Teddy's Oreo Cookie habit. Before placing his bet, he holds an Oreo up to his ear and twists it apart- because he likes the sound it makes. Everybody has a secret quirk like that, and it was nice to see one on screen.
ROUNDERS is worth a look if you're a fan of Damon or Norton- in the Damon-Norton-Affleck-DiCaprio career longevity race, my money is on them. But there is simply not enough original material here to warrant devoting much of your time to it. High stakes poker would seem to offer choice suspense- but there was never any moment when I really felt the outcome was in doubt. Part of the problem is in the script and its reliance on mossy cliches. But the direction, too, is a little flat. Dahl has a good resume; both RED ROCK WEST and THE LAST SEDUCTION were tantalizing noir puzzles that kept you guessing until the end. While those films were mostly intellectual challenges, in ROUNDERS Dahl was asked to create real characters who inhabit a real world, and he wasn't quite equal to the task. It doesn't help that he resorts to stream-shrouded street shots and other techniques that Scorsese discarded twenty years ago. If you really want to experience the atmosphere for which this film strives, hit the video store, rent THE HUSTLER, and watch Paul Newman square off once more against Jackie Gleason's Minnesota Fats. Why settle for a couple of Jacks when a pair of Kings is well within reach?
FILMGEEK GRADE: 2 STARS
Please visit the FILMGEEK WEB SITE at http://www.filmgeek.com
"The best reviews you'll read online and off!" -- The LOS ANGELES TIMES20
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews