Not actually a film about the British game that resembles a kindergarten version of baseball, Rounders is actually another fun film basing most of the action around card tables. It's all about poker, and the people who make their living from it. It's also helmed by John Dahl, a director who very rarely put a foot wrong for his first full decade or so of moviemaking, before he then started picking up much more work int he world of TV (helming episodes of shows as varied as Fear Itself, Breaking Bad, True Blood, Justified, Ray Donovan, House Of Cards, and Yellowstone).
Matt Damon plays Mike McDermott, a promising young law student who has a pretty good life. He has a lovely partner, Jo (Gretchen Mol), and has decided to try and leave his days of poker behind him, after losing a BIG chunk of money in a foolish move to earn himself a route to the World Poker Championship. Abstaining from the lure of poker proves to be almost impossible, sadly, when Mike welcomes his old friend, Worm (Edward Norton), back into his life. Worm has just finished a prison sentence, and he immediately wants to make up lost time and earnings. Not trusting the playing method of Mike, Worm is happy to win via some underhanded methods. He's also happy to borrow a lot of money with Mike as his guarantor.
Considering what it is, poker makes for a fair amount of fun and tension, cinematically. Part of that is because movie poker often has people sitting around a table with hands that are often astronomically near-impossible to have dealt from the deck in the same game session, let along the same tense head to head, and part of that is to do with the interesting ways in which great poker players can be shown to be able to read their opponents and quickly calculate odds. Writers David Levien and Brian Koppelman make the most of this latter aspect, having Damon's character be quite the card savant. This is best illustrated by a superb scene in which he helps a judge (Martin Landau) bet high against his colleagues, explaining who is holding what cards in their hands. The use of Worm is another way to make things more exciting though, ensuring that the card games have real stakes. More than just chips and pride, a loss could lead to a lot of pain. And Worm's approach to the game, trying every grift possible to ensure a win, helps to make the lead character seem more like a true sportsman, an expert looking to relearn some lessons after being humbled by a major loss.
Dahl knows what he's doing here, easily keeping things lively and fun for viewers. You get to see cards, you get a peek at the mechanics of some of the trickery, and voiceover narration from Damon keeps everyone informed about the rules, the odds, and the methodology. The film maintains an energy and level of cinematic cool for almost the entire runtime.
While the lead role isn’t really a stretch for Damon, he does well playing another brand of genius without the social lubrication to keep a position in an upper-class world. Norton is very easy to dislike, also doing well as the kind of character destined to forever try too hard for success in a way that guarantees failure after failure. Mol is as underserved here as she has been so often, but she gives a performance so good that it makes you wonder why she never seemed to get a bigger break that others got, although she has built up a great body of work over the years. Landau steals the few scenes he has, John Turturro gets to play a fairly nice guy, for once, and John Malkovich is fun, with an added accent, as Teddy KGB, the big poker player who needs beaten on the way to a complete turnaround of fortune. There is also a small role for Famke Janssen, who is always welcome, and a cameo from poker superstar Johnny Chan.
It’s quite easy to see where this is going, and the lack of any major surprises in the third act is a bit of a shame, but Rounders doesn’t want to be a gritty and bleak film. It is a by-the-numbers sports movie, a tale of someone having faith in himself as others fall by the wayside. That sport may be poker, as opposed to any number of more energetic pursuits, but every other trope and story beat you expect is right here. Which ends up being a good thing, because this is one of the better sports movies I have watched in a while, but that may be to do with my love of poker.
8/10
If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
