Alrighty, here we have two well thought out reviews of ROUNDERS which these two just loved. In addition Hallenbeck called to say that he really really liked it as well. So that's 3 out of 3 so far. In addition there were about 10 of those "Saw Rounders. It's great. Write for more." I did and hopefully they'll comment on back. Seems like Dahl has another winner which is great. I love it when we get a great John Dahl movie, there's a part of me that believes he's a lot like De Palma, and is definately someone to keep close tabs on. Too bad Red Rock West wasn't available for an academy nomination eh? Anyway, onto the reviews....
Rounders was great! Let me give you the goods....
First, though, some other details.....
As I said yesterday, it was at the Agoura Hills, CA Mann Theater.
I was slightly surprised from the onset. This preview wasn't handled by the usual company. The staff at this one were wearing laser nametags that read "Motion Picture Preview". I hadn't been to one of their screenings before. I hadn't heard of them before.
Anyway...on to my review.....
Rounders is a great movie about a young law student who is involved in high stakes poker games in and around NYC.
Matt Damon delivers a rather convicing portrayal of Mike, a straight shooter who, initially, leads the double life of a law student by day and a card shark at night. His performance in this film was terrific.
He has a dream of playing in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and is determined to get there.
His girlfriend Jo, played by Gretchen Mol, has different ideas. She thinks Mike is gambling his life away. She doesn't know whether Mike is truly a good player or a loser. She just doesn't want him to play cards anymore.
A conflict occurs when Mike's longtime friend Worm, played by Edward Norton, is released from jail. Norton delivers a convincing and despising performance as a con artist who just doesn't care about anything. Worm has a lot of outstanding debts from before he went to prison which have all been consolidated by a guy named Teddy KGB.
John Malkovich is great as Teddy KGB. I think this character is one of those characters which prove how good an actor Malkovich is. Because there were no credits on the film before or after, I didn't realize until later that KGB was Malkovich.
New York serves as the backdrop for this film and that proves to be most convincing. This story isn't the kind of thing that can take place in Kansas. The characters had very New York nicknames. Teddy KGB is called that because he's Russian. Joey Knish, played by John Turturro, owns a knish business. The action is fast paced, realistic and believable, although I believe that some of the funnier dialogue may be lost on some folks.
No one at the preview seemed to laugh at some of the lines which were funny, probably because they didn't quite understand them. One instance of this was when Damon was walking into a card club where he had lost previously and quipped that he "felt like Bill Buckner walking back into Shea Stadium". No one got it but me.
Now, I did think they could have done a little better job on some of the editing. There was one conversation between Knish and Mike that just seemed to be missing a giant chunk in the middle.
The music seemed to fit in and includes a new song from the Counting Crows at the end. I'm not really a fan of theirs but the preview people seemed to make a big deal out of it.
I would have to give this about 8 out of 10. For this one, refer to me as Ace High.
Here's Dr Lecter's review which is divided up into two sections "non-spoilers" and "spoilers" read what you will. He loved the film though...
Hey Harry, long time listener, first time submitter. Went and saw "Rounders" last night in a test screening in Agoura Hills, about 30 minutes outside of LA. The company wasn't NRG, but still had the silly "I promise not to email Harry Knowles" cards... of course, if it wasn't my name on the signature line then how can I feel guilty?
So I'll break this up into two parts, spoiler and non-spoiler. Non-spoiler first: the film is extremely well made, with super strong dialog (particularly for the slang-infested theme of underground high-stakes poker), incredible performances from Edward Norton and Matt Damon, and fluid, form-equals-function direction by John Dahl. Weaker elements were the girlfriend's (Gretchen Moll) subplot, performance and motivations, and Malkovich, while good in every other way, went off the deep end with his Russian accent. Also, the theme of the story left me mixed... but more about that in spoilers.
Edward Norton is incredible. Always dead on and making every line a feast of dark humor, he's the catayst for the catharsis of Damon's character. One thing about Courtney Love... she can certainly spot the geniuses in the crowd -- I suppose it takes one to know one. Anyway, he's worth the price of admission alone.
Damon, or "Chief Big White Teeth" as named previously on AICN, is kinda like Winona Ryder in "Reality Bites"-- good, but definitely the plainest thing in the movie. He's the classic male lead, somewhat bland in and of himself, albeit a really charismatic and charming bland, always needing external impetus for pushing the plot. It's not a far cry from "Good Will Hunting," as he's a different kind of genius (substitute 'poker' for 'math').
Gretchen Moll, as the girlfriend, comes across so cold and isolated that it made me wonder, to the point of distraction, what he would possibly see in her. Now, Ms. Moll can sell magazines by being on the cover, but if they were banking on her looks to make her interesting then they shoulda picked Christy Turlington. I had seen a test trailer for 'Rounders' a few months ago, and there were snippets from scenes with her that weren't in last night's cut... so I'm torn whether more scenes with her would make her more interesting or if the cut bait approach is smarter. As I saw it, she came across like a annoying AA meeting chair: soberer-than-thou and unable to accept others for who they are. Obviously she's based on someone that one of the screenwriters once loved and it just didn't translate...
Supporting characters: Martin Landau, a judge who oversees mock courts in Damon's law school, is fine, with a long, obvious, but fitting speech in the middle to Damon. He's the moral, parental voice, and fits the role adequately. Malkovich, a club owner and loan shark, is the nemesis, and, as mentioned earlier, practically screams "I can do a great Russian accent" but sometimes, John, less is more. Famke Jannsen, who is so damn sexy she could induce a hardon from a corpse, is underused as a streetwise club hostess. John Turturro, a fellow rounder who understands the game on a inate level, is a the brother figure, and has some of the best lines outside Ed Norton. All strong, all doing their part for the catharsis.
As I told the Amateur Market Research Corp, I would definitely recommend this film to friends, and thus to each of you....
Now I move on to spoilers....
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The plot centers around Damon's character (can't remember the name), who is a strong poker player with dreams of one day sitting in Vegas and winning the World Series of Poker (which is held at Binion's Horseshoe, not the Mirage as mentioned in the film). Instead of pursuing the dream, he goes to law school, hooks up with a bright, strong and necessarily beautiful fellow law student. The film begins with him collecting ten thousand dollar bricks of cash from around his apartment to make a play for the "big boys" at KGB's (Malkovich's) club. After Damon deftly explains how the big game is working and why he bets it all so quickly, Malkovich decimates him and thus Damon gives up poker as he feels like he doesn't have what it takes. Eighteen months later, after Damon's been working blue collar legit jobs to keep himself in law school, Ed Norton is getting out of jail and thus kicking the plot into gear. The girlfriend is not pleased when Damon even mentions having been present, but not playing, at his boss' (Landau) poker game. So when Norton drags him to a game literally hours after his release, and Damon lies about it, Gretchen catches him in his lie and is real pissed. Not long after, she bails, taking her stuff and moving out.
Now, I know that when dealing with degenerate gamblers, that's literally all you can do. If they are lying and caught in the sickness, they need to climb out alone. But he was not this undulating mess of deceit and betrayal... if she was willing to stay with him for that long, one would hope she wouldn't abandon him at the first whiff of a relapse. But we only have 110 minutes, so she bails and he, with nothing keeping him legit (law school is such a secondary thought to him that it obviously only exists in the script as a symbol of society's expectations, not to mention a wink-wink ironic situation), falls back in to cards, money, fast women and easy scams. Of course, he's a MORAL con man, and so only likes running cheats on rich, elitist white boys. Ed Norton also falls back in, and while trying to repay a $10,000 debt which mushroomed to $25,000 while in the joint, only falls further into debt. Betrayal and such goes on, with Famke's character, the sultry, sexy debt collector/club hostess making a pass at Damon, in his apartment, AND HIM REFUSING. Made absolutely NO sense. I don't care how long previously that ice queen Gretchen bailed... any guy who passes on what he passes on must be having fantasies about Ben Affleck.
So the plot thickens and our hero gets deeper and deeper in, and that's all I'll say as far as that, because it hurts the filmmaker's chance to get to tell the story. The above is what an average person could glean from Entertainment Weekly on the film's release, so I don't feel guilty letting it out. BUT, there is a big thematic problem I had with the film, which I will now address, and don't read if you don't want to know.
Essentially, this film glorifies degenerate gambling, with Damon explaining that it's skill, not luck, that creates world class poker players. Point taken. BUT that's exactly what every degenerate says to themselves... that "I am not like everyone else" and that "I can beat this game." Now we, as the audience, are to believe that smiling Matt Damon really can beat it and that he's following his dream to go be a degenerate in Las Vegas. Charming, Mr. Dahl... you've just done for Binion's what Top Gun did for the Navy. I really don't mean that in terms of "artistic responsibility"... I loved "Natural Born Killers" because its whole premise is that if you're such an idiot that watching people kill people in movies makes you want to kill people in real life, then there is something seriously wrong with you. And I get the idea that life is a gamble and the chance not taken is torture. BUT! There is a flashback scene where Matt tells John Turturro that he once sat down with Johnny Chan, the living legend of poker. Lots of slow motion, lots of closeups, and lo and behold, Matt bluffs on the King. Thus, Matt's logic follows, "I should go to Vegas and see how I do against the greats." Fair enough... except that he already knows. He's done it... and wants more. But one never gets the sense that there will ever be enough... he's a degenerate. He's the heroin junkie who's found what he wants to do for the rest of his life. That was my only real problem with the film, but it exists at a pretty fundamental level.
ps. After they wrapped, Matt Damon and Ed Norton got into the first round of the World Series of Poker at Binion's just this last summer... they didn't have to go through the qualifying round and thus some of the other players were a little bitter. Each lasted in the contest a matter of hours, and I'm sure this story will be milked at length for the publicity of the film at release. The point is, however, no matter what kind of player you think you are, you are always just chasing it.
Dr. Lecter
