Sit In On This Hand
Rounders
Cast: Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Famke Janssen, John Turturro
Director: John Dahl
Movie Help Web Popcorn Kernels:
Rounders is like a low-risk, low-key poker player who doesn't win a lot of big hands, but somehow ends up with the pot at the end of the game. In this enjoyable film, the pleasure is not in watching the poker itself, but in observing the players at the table: Matt Damon, Edward Norton, John Malkovich, John Turturro, and Martin Landau.
Damon plays Mike McDermott, law student who's also a scholar in high-stakes poker. Don't think Caesar's Palace or The Mirage: this is the underground poker scene, with smoke-filled rooms, rounders (those who make a living at the game), mobsters, and other unsavory characters.
Usually McDermott (a canny, analytical player) is pretty wise to the ways of the game. He's read all the books, he wins his share of hands, and even reviews tape of the world championships so he can study the masters. McDermott, especially in Damon's voice-overs, emphasizes that poker is about skill - more psychology than luck. But one night, he himself gets psyched out, betting - and losing - all his tuition money in a game against Russian gangster Teddy KGB (Malkovich).
The story picks up nine months later; McDermott has sworn off poker, as a promise to his girlfriend Jo (Gretchen Mol), and now earns his keep by driving a delivery truck for Joey Knish (Turturro). But he's about to get dragged back into the scene by Worm (Norton), his best friend from childhood who's just been released from prison. It turns out that Worm - always in trouble - has just five days to pay off a debt of $15,000 to Teddy KGB, or be at the mercy of Ray Iannicelli's loan shark. And who else should Worm turn to but his longtime partner in crime, McDermott?
The plot is a bit mechanical in places - Jo, for instance, is out of the picture very abruptly, and stays there until the end. And the poker itself is relatively uneventful. Even with the high-stakes games, there's not a lot of "drama" - no extreme close-ups on the eyes of the combatants, no beads of sweat trickling down one's face, no twitching fingers. (Although there are a few tight shots of Teddy KGB's Oreos.) In this respect, the movie is like Damon's character: quiet, observant, not overly demonstrative.
And I was glad. When a movie has assembled as talented a cast as we have here, it doesn't need artificially created tension. It can rely on its actors instead, especially Norton and Damon as the opposite ends of the poker-playing spectrum.
This was the first time I've seen Norton in action, and I was mightily impressed by his wild, untrustworthy, exuberant, and completely unrepentant Worm. He's entertaining as a loser who couldn't ever deal with life straight up; you get the feeling that he'd happily swear a solemn oath on a stack of Bibles - while keeping his fingers crossed. Damon matches him as the level-headed, logical, loyal McDermott, whose faith in his own abilities is rewarded (even if his faith in his friends is not).
Malkovich is no Meryl Streep when it comes to accents (he didn't have one at all in The Man in the Iron Mask, and mangles a Russian one in Rounders). But his over-the-top campiness works here, and it's fun to watch his showdowns with Damon. Turturro and Landau contribute solid performances as, respectively, the risk-averse Knish and McDermott's wise law professor.
Though Gretchen Mol appears on all the movie posters, she doesn't get a lot of screen time (not much more than Famke Janssen, who has a very small part). Fans of NBC, watch for appearances by Melina Kanakaredes (Providence) and Goran Visnjic (ER); Bostonians, be on the lookout for hometown comedian Lenny Clarke.
