Review: ROUNDERS

JOHN DAHL DEALS A LOSING HAND

(reviewed on ppv Sunday, April 11th, 1999)

    Remember “Red Rock West”? That movie truly rocked. It went straight to cable no less, but starred Nicholas Cage, Dennis Hopper, J.T. Walsh, and Lara Flynn Boyle. It was co-written and directed by John Dahl. It was the best of the so-called modern film noir flicks, even besting that lousy “Chinatown” in my humbly sober oppinion.
    Dahl went on to make the critic fave “The Last Seduction” which just didn’t do much for me except for a great appreciation for the female form in action. Then Dahl lost his entire reputation with the terribly awful “Unforgettable” with Ray Liotta. It was so bad Dahl seemed to have jumped off a bridge.
    Years later he would return after striking a lucrative deal with indi giant Miramax. Dahl gets to direct his new film he also co-wrote for Miramax. The catch? He has to direct a little card movie starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton. Since this is Miramax we’re talking about, let’s throw in John Turturro, Famke Jansen and Martin Landau for no good reason. And Gretchen Mol is beautiful so they pump her up as a star and she’s in the movie for maybe FIVE SECONDS.
    I didn’t hate the film. The script is very smart and it’s a very watchable film, unfortunately Miramax didn’t nurture it like they probably nurtured some of their better films. “Rounders” had potential. Towards the end it falls apart so hard that you realize you don’t give a shit about anyone in the film and all the characters you thought were decent turn out to be made of cardboard.
    Damon is a regular college guy who knows about the underworld of cards. He doesn’t play by luck, he plays by skill. Once upon a time he showed up with a boat load of confidence to this Russian dude’s (John Malkovich) lair and lost 31 grand. The film picks up a few years  later after he quit playing cards. His card playing pal from before (Edward Norton, the best thing about the flick) is out of prison and needs to pay a few old debts so he enlists Damon’s help to get him into some swank card playing hangouts.
    Eventually Damon turns to the dark side and they start playing for a hefty debt or they’ll probably be killed.
    The two clowns who wrote this script had a lot of great ideas. They apparently were card players themselves, and it shows. The movie is really cool dealing with the “smarts” of poker. Apparently Dahl made a lot of hoopla in his style of shooting the film without ever showing anyone else’s hands. I honestly watched the whole film and didn’t notice.
    “Rounders” is light fluff, with a ton of ideas and good actors totally wasted. It starts off good but falls apart like a bad hand. I guess Dahl was full throttle into his “real” feature. Let’s hope that’s much better. **