Rama’s SCREEN

All poker movies have gotten too similar. You see one, you’ve seen everything. This one is like The Color of Money but instead of pool table, it’s you know what. You don’t play the card, you play the player, blah, blah, blah. Tell us something we don’t know. But somehow,… I keep coming back, because no matter how stupid the characters are and how predictable the story might be, watching people play poker is still entertaining, in movies or not in movies.

An old school, old timer Poker master returns from his 20 year hiatus to teach a young college grad how to win a poker game. The young kid seems to need help in mastering the art of talking to girls as well. Eventually he becomes real good at reading people. As for the old timer, he knows that he has to break the promise he’s made and take a shot at World Tournament one last time.

This is like the movie that brought back some has-beens of our time. I’ve always wondered what happened to Burt Reynolds and Shannon Elizabeth.

After his Oscar nominated performance in Boogie Nights, you’d think he’d be making as good or even better gigs after that, but no, he chose to do one insignificant project after another.
The days of American Pie are behind Shannon Elizabeth. She was hot enough for TV’s Dancing with the Stars but apparently not hot enough for the screen anymore. I predict her career will vanish as easily as Elizabeth Berkley’s (Showgirls) did.

If the movie DEAL is what’s at stake in the game show Deal or No Deal, I’d say despite the fact that it’s not worth paying tickets to go to theaters to see, I don’t see the harm of continue watching it on DVD.
It has some interesting moments… and the lame moments, well, you can simply fast forward and skip them.

The art of bluffing and studying people’s faces and personalities and habits in the game of poker never loses its fun.
The movie could’ve done itself without Shannon’s character and just doubled the poker playing time, and the movie would be much more exciting.
The movie however does well in making poker look real good. It wants to get a message across that pride is all a man’s got. If you take away his dignity and respect, he’ll always be haunted by the desire to reclaim what he thinks is should’ve been his.
It shows that normal jobs are not as fun as playing pokers.
It fails to show that a lot of people have fallen into debts because of online poker and gambling addictions.
The movie doesn’t want you to know that.

* Place the cursor on the image below to check my grade for this film