Another intolerably bad poker movie

I just watched "The Big Blind."* It is as bad as the worst of any of the poker movies I've previously reviewed.

There's a caveat to that, however--it has a lot more poker than most. It's not very good or interesting poker, but at least the movie does largely revolve around the game. It might better be called "Scenes from a Poker Room," because there isn't any central plot. Instead, there are something like 12-15 characters, forming about five distinct story lines. The only thing they all have in common is the real-life Lake Elsinore Casino.

The production values are about half a step above home movies.

There are a few recognizable poker faces. Here are Matt Corboy, Jennifer Harman, and, in a non-speaking, uncredited role, Daniel Negreanu (looking remarkably like Worm, the Edward Norton character in "Rounders"):



Corboy is best known in poker circles as one of the commentators for the one-season, ill-fated Professional Poker Tour. Here's another shot of him, with a look that the producers of the PPT, oddly, did not ask him to recreate for their shows:



Then there's the inimitable Scotty Nguyen, who plays a character named "Scotty," a poker player. Imagine that. He stars in what I thought was the best scene in the film (though it had nothing to do with poker). He is in a store, gets treated kindly by one stranger, badly by another, and deals with them both accordingly--but never loses his cool, speaking only a few carefully chosen words.



The poker is reasonably true to life, as movies go. The most glaring bit of phoniness about it, as you can see from the next screen shot, is that in this casino they play high-stakes cash games with plain, solid-colored chips--the kind you can purchase at K-Mart. That would certainly make buying into the game a lot cheaper: pick up several dozen generic chips at the discount store for a song, then take them to the casino, where they will be honored as worth hundreds apiece. I can't figure out why they had permission to shoot lots of scenes in the casino, but not use real chips. It's a glaring error, like shooting a war movie with water pistols as props.



But the whole thing is badly written, badly acted, and badly shot, so there's really no reason to expect anything better from the props, I suppose. If you're big-time into poker, you probably need to see this stinker just so that you can say you did. But don't expect much from it.

This customer review from amazon.com (you can buy the DVD used from a few of their affiliated vendors) has it about right, though I think he's too hard on poor Scotty Nguyen:

This is a low budget widescreen movie (in LPCM audio=48 khz,16 bit, 2
chnnl--though, it sounded perfectly fine), sprinkled with a few poker stars. I
only rented this, so it was easier for me to watch the whole thing without
feeling ripped off. Jennifer Harman (top poker player), does an okay job playing
the very minor role of a woman (Linda-I think), who's temporarily playing poker
along with her boyfriend Lane (played by Matt Corboy-best known as one of the
PPT tv announcers, or as Officer Ray Carlson, in the tv series, "The Shield"),
until they win enough to get out of town. Corboy was good enough in the movie as
well (he had a goofy, yet, still charming persona), and I liked the way he would
often sing Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" (You got to know when to hold 'em...) to
annoy people or please himself. After doing well, Lane decides to stay and keep
playing, while Harman's character decides to leave town (that's the last we see
of her in the movie).

However, Scotty Nguyen is so bad, it is actually quite funny. Half of the
time I couldn't understand what he was saying. He plays a wise poker player
named Scotty. He says baby, quite often, so I guess he's just playing himself.
But he's so bad, he needs to work on even playing himself, before his next small
screen appearance. At least at the end, they showed his WSOP win (with audio
only at the very end of it). Poker star, Daniel Negreanu, is just in a brief
scene near the beginning, sitting beside Jennifer at the poker table. He says
nothing and was obviously just doing his real life friend, Harman, a favor.

The movie also features several other characters that are struggling with
poker and some who are also ultimately searching for love. It has an annoying
narrator, who comments throughout the movie, but after awhile his drab comments
blended in with the awful storylines, so I was less repulsed. There is enough
poker in the movie, but it mostly centres on bad play and angry reactions,
rather than any quality poker.

So, yes, the movie is awful, but if you're a fan of poker great, Scotty
Nguyen, and want to see him in a train wreck of a movie, then look to rent it.
Whatever you do, don't buy it, or you just might decide to stop watching poker
movies, forever! You've been warned, baby!

*The date on this movie is somewhat mysterious to me. The usually reliable IMDB lists it as 1999 (see here), while the DVD is apparently labeled as 2003, at least according to the information on the torrents directory from which I downloaded it. (It's not available for purchase, nor from Netflix, so one's choices for accessing it are limited.) Jennifer Harman is credited as "Jennifer Harman Traniello," implying that she was married when it was produced. According to a book I have, she was married in late 2000. My best guess is that it was shot in 1999, but not released until 2003.