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BY KIM MORGAN
Rounders |
Filmmaker John Dahl should have listened to his newest protagonist's advice: "If you're too careful, your whole life can become a fucking grind." So can your movie. What a shame. The independent director--who began his career with the cultish, neo-noir thriller Kill Me Again and then exploded onto the scene with Red Rock West and The Last Seduction--has improved since his last film (the forgettable Unforgettable)but not much. His latest picture, Rounders, is a mediocre snooze.Starring "it boy" Matt Damon as Mike McDermott (the aforementioned advice giver), Rounders follows the trials and tribulations of an ingenious poker hustler and his relationship with his best friend and partner, Worm (Edward Norton). Mike is a bright, New York City law student from the wrong side of the tracks who has paid his tuition with poker winnings. (Hmm... sounds familiar. Good Will Dealing, perhaps?) After losing all his money to a Russian poker-club owner (John Malkovich), Mike gives up the game and goes legit. He drives a truck, attends class and makes out with his sensitive girlfriend, Jo ("it girl" Gretchen Mol). Aside from doling out poker advice to his law professor and mentor Petrovsky (Martin Landau), he leads a generally normal life--until his best friend shows up. When Worm is released from prison, Mike is met with the all-too-seductive temptation to get back into the game. Urging him to resume their partnership, Worm talks Mike into playing on the very first night he is released. In a house filled with rich Ivy League squares playing poker and smoking pipes, the two clean up. With a wad of dough, Mike returns home late to a pissed-off girlfriend. Clearly, he's not, as he told Worm, "off of it." Jo leaves him, he screws up at school and he disappoints his professors--the normal life is over. Against his better judgment, he teams up with Worm, who has not only a huge gambling debt but a destructive, cocky attitude as well. The two are soon embroiled in a serious mess with Russian loan sharks (including the slimy Malkovich) and other gambler friends (such as John Turturro). What will Mike do? Though his moral question is a perfect springboard for another noirish Dahl picture, here it is rendered lifeless, shallow and uninteresting. Mike is a flat poker-faced boy for whom we care little; Worm is not on screen enough for us to be thrilled by his unpredictability; Jo is useless plot decoration; and the picture's classic poker-playing musings are strained. The skeleton is there, but there's hardly any flesh. This isn't to say that the film is horrible; on the contrary, it is smart, tight, well-acted, competently shot and occasionally witty. But it plays like good technical writing: All the grammatical consistencies are there but without the juice. Considering Dahl's filmography, this is a surprise. Both Red Rock West and The Last Seduction were such fascinating, fun and spirited pictures that through swooning word of mouth, they broke out of their HBO TV Movie slots and went to the big screen. Too bad Rounders couldn't have been relegated to HBO; since it offers too little to fill up much space, the film is perfect for the small screen. The actors, however, are not; they are just horribly miscast. As Mike, Damon does an adequate job, particularly in playing smart, but he just doesn't possess the roughness of a bad-boy New Yorker. Ditto for Edward Norton. Norton is a great actor--much better than Damon, in fact--but he simply cannot play a character named Worm unless Worm means sci-fi geek rather than poker stud. He struts around in jewelry and a predictable sleazy, hip-length leather jacket, but he carries none of the wounded essence and half-cocked bravado his character should be plagued with. Dahl must have studied Scorsese's Mean Streets; Mike and Worm are almost carbon copies of Charley (Harvey Keitel) and Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro), only without the realism. Damon and Norton don't look as if they even drink alcohol; they're more like boys who would have milk mustaches left from washing down all the cookies their mommies gave them. They come off as poseurs, guys no one would let in on a poker game. Except for Landau, Turturro and a few other character actors who get regrettably little screen time, the cast is unspectacular. Mol is stultifyingly boring and has an annoying voice; she could use some elocution lessons. Sadly, the only thing intriguing about her is her visibly erect breasts, which are reprised from her Vanity Fair cover the minute she appears on screen. And once again, Malkovich is laughable. His Russian accent is exaggerated, and his quirky sleaziness (he wears tight polyester disco shirts emblazoned with houses and trees and eats Oreos seductively) is hilarious though out of place for such an earnest film. When is Malkovich just going to break down and do more comedies? Or, for that matter, when is Dahl? The director seems bored with his genre. Some more advice: Take a few risks, don't be so controlled and, please, don't deal us a pair of deuces.
originally published September 9, 1998 |
