A recent thread in the discussion forums at http://www.allvegaspoker.com/ asked for opinions on the worst poker movie ever. Somebody mentioned "Luckytown" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0160495/), which had previously escaped my attention, so I ordered it from Netflix and watched it last night. Yep--another dog.
The only bright spot is that it has Kirsten Dunst in it, whom I would marry. She's always nice to look at on the screen. But even that pleasure is turned to disgust when she is made to give such Shakesperean soliloquies as this:
"My feeling is that life hands you things, and nine out of ten times you can’t do anything with them. And then it hands you something you can do something with. And you ought to just grab it, and hold it tight. And hope you never lose it. And then you’re not alone."
You've got to be a member of a union of professional writers, like the Writers Guild of America, to come up with brilliant lines like that. Long may the strike last.
The plot centers around Dunst, who has just turned 18 and run away from her mother to Las Vegas to find the father who abandoned the family long ago. Played by James Caan, he allegedly is the greatest poker player in the world, or at least was before he became a washed-up, degenerate, has-been drunk.
Caan aims to get a big bankroll back by taking on a rich, mob-connected strip-club owner in heads-up poker. Caan's former girlfriend is now the rich guy's moll. In another bit of scintillating dialogue, she warns Caan not to play against him:
"It’s not like before. He plays a mean game now. Even when you win, you lose. Kind of like with you and me."
Meanwhile, Dunst picks up along the way to Vegas another teenager who, we are led to believe, is God's gift to poker. We see him play exactly one hand--against Caan, of course. Caan sees his talent and says he'll become one of the best ever. That all gets thrown away at the end of the film, though, because Dunst disapproves of the gambler's lifestyle, so they trade giving up vices: She quits smoking and he quits playing cards. Yeah, that makes sense. Smoking is a filthy habit that costs you money and destroys your health, while true poker talent is a rare gift that can bring fabulous wealth and freedom. So they're pretty much equivalent.
The match between Caan and his nemesis is reduced to one hand, which you can pretty much piece together from the photos above. As per the pathetic standard in poker scenes, they completely ignore the string-bet rule. It's as if Hollywood writers are incapable of conceiving of any way of putting in a raise other than the hackneyed: "Your 50" (push chips forward, followed by a dramatic pause) "plus another 100." When the two characters involved are unambiguously portrayed as old-time pros at Vegas casino poker, this just falls flat.
For more plausibility, nothing beats pocket aces versus pocket kings in a one-on-one match, first hand, with both players making sets with the board. Yeah, that's pretty much how every hand of poker is.
In "Annie Hall," Woody Allen says, "There's an old joke. Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of them says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know, and such small portions.' Well, that's essentially how I feel about life--full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly."
One might say the same about the poker in this movie: It's really awful, and there's far too little of it. Two hands in an hour and a half of screen time. It's a stretch to call this a poker movie. And yes, it really is a lot worse than "Lucky You."
(To see my previous reviews of poker movies, just click on the "movies" label at the end of this post or in the list of labels in the left-lower corner of the page.)
The only bright spot is that it has Kirsten Dunst in it, whom I would marry. She's always nice to look at on the screen. But even that pleasure is turned to disgust when she is made to give such Shakesperean soliloquies as this:
"My feeling is that life hands you things, and nine out of ten times you can’t do anything with them. And then it hands you something you can do something with. And you ought to just grab it, and hold it tight. And hope you never lose it. And then you’re not alone."
You've got to be a member of a union of professional writers, like the Writers Guild of America, to come up with brilliant lines like that. Long may the strike last.
The plot centers around Dunst, who has just turned 18 and run away from her mother to Las Vegas to find the father who abandoned the family long ago. Played by James Caan, he allegedly is the greatest poker player in the world, or at least was before he became a washed-up, degenerate, has-been drunk.
Caan aims to get a big bankroll back by taking on a rich, mob-connected strip-club owner in heads-up poker. Caan's former girlfriend is now the rich guy's moll. In another bit of scintillating dialogue, she warns Caan not to play against him:
"It’s not like before. He plays a mean game now. Even when you win, you lose. Kind of like with you and me."
Meanwhile, Dunst picks up along the way to Vegas another teenager who, we are led to believe, is God's gift to poker. We see him play exactly one hand--against Caan, of course. Caan sees his talent and says he'll become one of the best ever. That all gets thrown away at the end of the film, though, because Dunst disapproves of the gambler's lifestyle, so they trade giving up vices: She quits smoking and he quits playing cards. Yeah, that makes sense. Smoking is a filthy habit that costs you money and destroys your health, while true poker talent is a rare gift that can bring fabulous wealth and freedom. So they're pretty much equivalent.
The match between Caan and his nemesis is reduced to one hand, which you can pretty much piece together from the photos above. As per the pathetic standard in poker scenes, they completely ignore the string-bet rule. It's as if Hollywood writers are incapable of conceiving of any way of putting in a raise other than the hackneyed: "Your 50" (push chips forward, followed by a dramatic pause) "plus another 100." When the two characters involved are unambiguously portrayed as old-time pros at Vegas casino poker, this just falls flat.
For more plausibility, nothing beats pocket aces versus pocket kings in a one-on-one match, first hand, with both players making sets with the board. Yeah, that's pretty much how every hand of poker is.
In "Annie Hall," Woody Allen says, "There's an old joke. Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of them says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know, and such small portions.' Well, that's essentially how I feel about life--full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly."
One might say the same about the poker in this movie: It's really awful, and there's far too little of it. Two hands in an hour and a half of screen time. It's a stretch to call this a poker movie. And yes, it really is a lot worse than "Lucky You."
(To see my previous reviews of poker movies, just click on the "movies" label at the end of this post or in the list of labels in the left-lower corner of the page.)
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