Rounders (1998) - Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Gretchen Mol, Martin Landau, John Malkovich
Everyone has their little problems. Matt Damon's character in "Rounders" has a big problem - a gambling problem that threatens to ruin his life more than once. "Rounders" flirts with being a great story about Mike McDermott (Damon) and his difficult path to a Pyrrhic victory, coming close, but never really making it.
Despite having never joined a 12-step program, it's clear that Mike doesn't have all the cards in his deck. In the opening scenes of the movie, he loses his life savings, including the money he was using to pay his law school tuition. With some difficulty, he takes up low-paying night jobs and settles down with his girlfriend Jo (Gretchen Mol).
Nine months later, an old card buddy with the appropriate nickname of Worm (Edward Norton) gets out of prison and promptly gets beat up for skipping out on his old gambling debts. Mike reluctantly returns to the shady world of illegal high-stakes poker to help Worm pay his debts, remembering why the game is so irresistible and watching the rest of his life collapse.
Damon and Norton are both excellent actors, and it shows. The audience is given remarkable insight into Damon's character, from narrative voice-overs to the slightest facial expressions. Norton's "Worm" is, well, a bit of a worm - stacking decks with the best of them, Norton projects just the right blend of good intentions and bad habits.
For the most part, the supporting cast - with character names like Petra, Kinish and Grandma - is also excellent. Martin Landau has a small but significant part as a law professor and McDermott's enigmatic mentor. John Malkovich, as the card shark, "KGB," is suitably devious and insane; his Oreo-munching performance alone is cause to see this movie.
But "Rounders" fails to sell the story convincingly on two fronts. One is the premise - not everyone is familiar with poker, so a lot of the jargon may go right over some viewers' heads.
The other is Mol. A key part of McDermott's fall from grace is the collapse of his romance with Jo, but it simply isn't plausible. Mol's emotional gauge is stuck on over-perky ex-cheerleader. There simply isn't any chemistry between her and Damon, and it's hard to care about their alleged relationship.
"Rounders" - the term refers to a poker player who makes the rounds of local games - has so much potential. It could have been the next "The Color of Money," but merely deals us a pair instead of a straight flush.
...dave
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