Stealth Entertainment
By Scott Lumley
September 4, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But Hollywood's loss is our gain. There is a veritable treasure trove of film out there that you may not have seen. I will be your guide to this veritable wilderness of unwatched film. It will be my job to steer you towards the action, adventure, drama and comedy that may have eluded you, and at the same time, steer you away from some truly unwatchable dreck.
Hopefully we'll stumble across some entertainment that may have slid under your radar. Wish us luck.
Rounders (1998)
Recently while wandering the Internet, I stumbled across the single worst promotion I had ever seen for an online poker site. Instead of offering free chips, or money or even one of the many poker strategy books available on the market, this site had elected to offer a DVD copy of Rounders after so many ‘raked' hands.
I couldn't stop laughing after I read it. I actually called up one of my poker buddies and told him about it and he started laughing so hard that I thought he might pass out. You see, Rounders is the very definition of a cult movie. It had a very limited run, had an amazing cast and has done a ridiculous amount of business in the aftermarket, primarily due to the explosion of poker in the last decade. Most (and by most, I mean all) poker players that I know not only own a copy of this film, they have memorized it down to the suits on the cards in the hands that are played.
Rounders stars Matt Damon as Mike McDermott, Edward Norton as Lester "Worm" Murphy, John Tuturro as Joey Knish, Famke Jansen as Petra and John Malkovich as Teddy KGB. That's a pretty amazing cast. If you tried to get those actors for a movie today it would probably cost you upwards of a hundred million dollars.
Rounders revolves around the life of Mike McDermott and to a lesser extent the life of his just-released-from-jail friend Lester "Worm" Murphy. Mike has actually quit playing poker just at the beginning of the film as he has been reduced to zero cash by another player in a high stakes game of poker. Worm gets out of prison a little while after this happens and drags him back in with a very crooked game in a private club wherein he and Mike essentially empty everyone's wallets.
It looks fun at first, but unfortunately Worm owes people money and that debt has been accumulating interest while he was making jail his residence. Those same people are large, muscular and violent and are not prone to calm and reasonable negotiation.
Mike and Worm set out on a quest to win the money they need to keep Worm from getting his legs broken, which almost immediately has a heavy toll on Mike's personal life. A little while later, Worm reverts to form and sets them both up for a completely nasty fall that leaves Mike in a situation that is best described as "utterly screwed". It's unfortunate, but it also sets up the film's climax. The climax takes place at a poker table, obviously, but the filmmakers have spent so much time carefully orchestrating the setup that the game is filled with as much tension as possible.
There are a lot of interesting things to say about Rounders, but first of all, I'd like to say this. The movie does an amazing job showing poker as a game that is sometimes horribly skeezy and other times as pure a form of competition as you will ever see. That said, the "Judge's game read" that occurs fairly early in the film is best described as complete nonsense. Nobody could possibly do what Mike does in that scene, and certainly not in the very limited amount of time he has to actually do it.
That's unfortunate, because just about every other depiction of poker in Rounders is as realistic as the filmmakers could possibly make it. The producers even got current (at the time) world poker champion Johnny Chan to make a cameo in the movie. It's not a cheap cameo either. It sets up Mike's fall from grace and into desperation.
One very nice thing about this movie is the cast of characters that flow through the film. From Teddy KGB to Joey Knish, these are some very interesting people. There's a long standing argument in the poker community that the true hero of the film isn't actually Mike McDermott, it's actually Joey Knish. Joey takes a very long-term approach to the game of poker and at one point declares that he's paying alimony to two wives, is putting his children through school and he says all this in the middle of a Turkish bath in the middle of the day. He isn't playing for the glory, he's playing to make a living and nothing else. He's a pure poker pro in every sense of the word, and just about everyone that bellies up to a table wishes they were like him.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is Teddy KGB, a Russian criminal running an underground poker room. He's very good at poker, better at messing with your head and lives to put people in bad places. He's also the provider of a number of quotes in the film that poker players worship to no end.
There are other characters in the film, of course. Norton plays Worm like a scheming jackass, unable to keep from screwing things up even when Mike has the best of it. Famke Jansen plays a character that runs a card room, and she has the hots for Mike as well. Mike somehow turns down her somewhat less than subtle advances on him, which makes me wonder if Mike was a eunuch as well as a poker player.
The entire movie is well set and filmed, with a surprisingly grungy feel for a sport that was literally starting to come into its own at the time. Dark alleys, streetwalkers and strippers are constantly in the background. There is a less than subtle sub-current of threatened violence through the entire film as well, as both Mike and Worm take some ugly (and well deserved) beatings.
The dialogue is also lowbrow and laced with insider talk, thoroughly immersing the viewer into Mike's exhilarating yet dangerous world. It's a skillful job of putting the viewer into the underbelly of poker in a big mean city.
What the film does lack are some decisions to be made. Worm is played as a relentless screw-up and every time you're given even a chance to like him he's practically spitting in Mike's face. How Mike backs him up as long as he does is a mystery to me. Teddy KGB is played in almost the same manner, screwing over Mike again and again until nearly the very last scene of the movie when he does something surprisingly unexpected. The only moment of real decision in the entire film is done right at the end of the movie, and it's actually a fairly tough decision to make.
Still this is a fine movie. It's gritty, it's edgy, and is full of stellar performances and intriguing action. It really has achieved cult status long after its domestic run and is pretty much revered as the Holy Bible of poker films, edging out the Cincinnati Kid for that spot. There's a reason why poker players watch this film again and again and again and yet Lucky You doesn't even have a slot in their DVD collection.
All in all, Rounders is like looking into your pocket cards and seeing a pair of Kings. It's not a perfect hand, but you're pretty damn glad to see it.