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Rounders
Title: Rounders
Director: John Dahl
Starring: Matt Damon, Edward Norton, John Malkovich
Length: 121 minutes
Date: 1998
Rating: Rated R for pervasive strong language, some sexuality and brief drug use
Rating:
Available at: Amazon.com ($16.99 w/Free Shipping available)
INTRODUCTION
This movie has single-handedly motivated millions of people to play poker competitively. Although it was mostly unnoticed by the masses, it has attained the ultimate cult status in the poker world. It’s rare to play in a poker game with friends and go through the whole night without someone quoting at least one line from the movie.
THE PLOT
In a conspiratorial, low-key voice-over narration, professional poker player Mike McDermott (Matt Damon), a clean-cut, high-stakes poker gambler, guides us through the world of underground poker. According to Mike, success in poker comes as much from reading the person as it does from reading the cards that he holds.
After losing $30,000 on a single hand to a Russian gangster named Teddy KGB, Mike quits poker to focus on law school and to appease his girlfriend, Jo. Some time later, Mike's best friend Worm (Edward Norton) gets out of prison and the two of them start playing poker together again. This affects Mike's relationship with Jo and she dumps him. His performance at law school also begins to suffer. Mike and Worm then set out on a mission to earn enough money playing poker to pay off Worm's gambling debt that he piled up with a loan shark before going to prison.
After accumulating half of the money required to pay off Worm's gambling debts, they decide to play in a big game together with a bunch of cops. Worms cheats throughout the game in order fatten his bankroll quicker. The cops catch them cheating, beat them up, and then take all their money. This incident creates a divide in their relationship and they go their separate ways. In between all the drama, Mike ends up taking on Worm's debt and now has to pay it back. So Mike then borrows $10,000 from his law professor and sits down with KGB for a rematch. Mike ends up turning that $10,000 into $55,000 then pays back the professor, pays back Worm's debt that he inherited and ends up with the same $30,000 that he started with. He then gets in a cab to go to Las Vegas to play in the World Series of Poker.
CHARACTERS
"Rounders" benefits from some colorful supporting performances. Edward Norton injects a lot of energy as the jittery, impulsive Worm. It's especially fun to watch the animated Worm during the card-playing scenes. Matt Damon plays the clean-cut, book-smart-but-also-street-smart, ultra-talented poker player tryin to make a name for himself. Martin Landau plays the cerebral, philosophical Judge Petrovsky who advices Mike on his life's choices. John Turturro plays Joey Knish, a gambler who doesn't take risks and grinds out a living. John Malkovich's engaging performance is especially good (and almost cheesy) as KGB, a Russian poker player/gangster with an over-the-top Russian accent. Also worth noting is the undernourished role of Jo, played by Gretchen Mol.
THE POKER SCENES
The poker playing scenes are some of the best in the movie because of the amount of attention paid to the details of the game of poker by director John Dahl and writers, David Levien and Brian Koppelman. They delve deeply into the subculture of poker, drench the dialogue in authentic poker lingo, explain all the psychological nuances of the game, and show all the subdued emotions and excitement of the players. Dahl's talent for creating an atmosphere of suspense makes for some tense and exciting poker hands.
The authentic poker-playing scenes are scenes that real poker players will appreciate. One such scene is the cameo by Johnny Chan. Another scene is where Worm is playing against two Russian players who are speaking to each other in Russian in the middle of a hand. Worm's pleading for them to speak "English only at the table!" reminded me of online poker which has fueled both multi-lingual poker games as well as a growing suspicion of collusion among players.
ANALYSIS
This movie was underappreciated because it was a movie before it's time. It was a precursor to the explosion in the popularity of poker. At first glance, some viewers might look at Mike's quest to turn his 5-figure bankroll into millions as an unbelievable Hollywood script, but the winner of the WSOP in 2003, Chris Moneymaker, was an amateur player who turned $40 into several million. And when Joey Kinish tries to convince Mike to take fewer risks in order to make a more stable living at poker and tells him "I don't have dreams of winning the World Series of Poker on ESPN", this shows the decision that most good players go through - should I grind out a low-risk, low-return living or go for the big money and fame? Hence, there are tons of amateur players entering satellites for the WPT and WSOP as well as players that are grinding out $30,000 a year playing multiple $2/$4 tables for several hours a day. One of the the scenes that illustrates the player types is is where Jo says hello to Kinish and asks him how he is doing. After a contemplative pause Kinish answers in a flat tone "the same" - because he is a grinder. If Kinish were a investor he would be be invested in bonds, while Mike McDermott would be a day-trader and Worm would probably be trading penny stocks and losing his ass.
Part of the value of this movie is that it attempts to break down the stereotypes associated with poker. There has always been some type of criminal element associated with poker and the people who play it. I'm not just talking about the illegal status of underground games but also the actual game itself. People have always thought of professional poker players as con men who sit down with unsuspecting novice players and steal their money. In poker you aren't trying to "con" anyone. If two players sit down at a card table they both know the object of the game is to take the money away from the other person. To be good at poker you need to read people. Admittedly, being street smart and being able to read people usually go hand in hand, but most successful players today are normal, intelligent people, and not people who just got out of jail yesterday. Even though the recent increase in the popularity of poker has helped legitimize the game of poker, the film still gets caged in innacurate stereotypes and suffers from discrimination from pious non-gamblers despite the fact that the film offers you a chance to increase your understanding of the game and the people who play it.
Part of the discimination against the movie is based on the perception that Mike is a self-destructing gambling addict. But addicts are people who can't stop whatever they're addicted to - that's what addicted means. After the first scene where Mike loses his life savings, he stopped when he realized that poker was interfering with his life and he might not be able to pay for law school. That kind of person is not an addict. Some critics thought that the movie took the easy way out, and let Mike off the hook. But this isn't true because, even though he loses his girlfriend and law school to poker, his separation from those aspects of his life was something he wanted but didn't realize it. When you lose something that you don't really want, then it isn't considered a loss.
One review I read said that Rounders offers no powerful insight into the world of gambling. Really? The main point of the plot was to show people that poker is a skill game and not the same as playing the lotto, which is something that the general public doesn't understand. The scene where Mike fires back at Jo after she chastises him for losing money illustrates the writers' attempt to educate the audience on the legitimacy of poker. When Mike says "It's a skill game Jo!", I was immediately convinced that this line was not directed at Jo as much as it was at the part of the audience that views poker as no different that playing roulette. This movie
isn't about a bunch of guys wildly betting their life savings. It is a juxtaposition of the pure gamblers who have no potential to accomplish anything as a poker player and the real poker players who are interested in building skills and growing as a player - and if you don't understand the difference then you weren't paying attention.
Some critics were disappinted because they thought the movie had a lot of potential to be a great movie. Since gamblers have always made for interesting characters studies, they wanted the movie be a character study of gamblers and tell a good human story. The irony is that the movie was a character study of gamblers - successful gamblers. These critics didn't notice this though since they were looking at the movie through through the judgmental eyes of conventional society that only see poker players in a bad light. This is exactly what the movie wanted to avoid.
The movie had good character growth since all of the characters ended up moving on to do the things they want to do in life. Mike drops out of law school to devote his full energy to poker. KGB realizes he isn't God. Jo realizes that she and Mike live in different worlds and breaks up with him, to eventually start a new relationship with some Starbucks-drinking, briefcase-carrying, BMW-driving, Khakis-wearing, law-school-graduating yuppie. The only character that doesn't grow (and rightfully so) is Worm, because you know that 20 years from now he will still be getting his ass kicked when his old, arthritic fingers are "catching hangers" on every other deal of the cards.
The voiceover offers rich narration to provide just enough explanation about the game and, in a game where most of the action is going on inside a person's mind, Mike's private dialogue with the viewers satisfies the audience's need to know what's everyone is thinking.
The only really unrealistic point in the movie was when Mike is watching the judges game and he perfectly reads every card that every player was holding and every card they were looking to get. This wouldn't happen. At best, he could tell who was strong, who was weak, and put players on groups of hands but that's about all. It's possible to do this against one or two hands but not against a whole table.
CONCLUSION
Rounders succeeds at providing a fascinating look at the underground poker world. David Levien and Brian Koppelman's story does a very good, if mechanical, job of taking the audience into the world of poker while seasoning it with just enough humor to keep it from getting monotonous. The movie's greatest asset is it's attention to detail. The writers have an acute understanding of the game and the poker world, making extensive use of insider vernacular, which lends the film an air of authenticity. Thanks to the writers though, poker neophytes will still be able to easily understand the insider dialogue through context. Although the movie has a formula script with a predictable ending, the movie is in no rush to get you there because the movie is really about the small moments and the journey itself is the reward for watching.
ROUNDERS FACTS
- Rounders was set in New York City but all of the law school scenes were filmed in and around Rutgers Law School in Newark, NJ.
- Worm was originally supposed to smoke but avid nonsmoker Edward Norton refused.
- Matt Damon and Edward Norton played in the $10,000 Main Event at the 1998 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. During the first of four days, Matt Damon was knocked out by former world champion and poker legend Doyle Brunson.
- John Turturro's character, Knish, was based on the unnamed character played by Michael Clapsadle in 1997's "Casino's are coming to Detroit". Writer David Levien had been in Livonia, Michigan during the shooting of the movie and decided that he wanted to expand on the character.
- Screenwriter Brian Koppelman came up with the idea for the script when he heard about a friend of a friend who made more money as a "rounder" than from his day job on Wall Street. He met the guy on a street corner in Manhattan, they went down to one of the clubs, where Koppelman, a former A&R scout for a record company, was immediately hooked by the exotic environment. When he got home at 2:30 in the morning, he called old friend Levien and told him about this great movie idea.
- Matt Damon got paid $600,000 for his part in the movie.
ROUNDERS QUOTES
- Worm: "In the poker game of life, women are the rake . . . they are the fucking rake."
- Kinish: "And I need a blowjob from Christy Turlington."
- Mike: "Listen, if you can't spot the sucker at the table in your first half hour at the table then you ARE the sucker."
- Mike: "I felt like Buckner walking back into Shea."
- KGB: "I'm just paying you with your own money from the last time I stick it in you."
- KGB: "He beat me - straight up. Pay him. Pay that man his money."
- Worm: "Hey, thats a hell of an elk."
- Worm: "You should have played those Kings, Mike."
- Worm: "You know what always cheers me up? Rolled up aces over kings. Check-raising stupid tourists and taking huge pots off of them. Stacks and towers of checks I can't even see over. Playing all-night, high-limit hold'em at the Taj, where the sand turns to gold."
- Mike: "I'm sorry John, I don't remember."
- Mike: "I have what is called "the wheel". It has earthy undertones, a smooth draw, and enough kick to give me the high and the low."
- Worm: "Fuck you and your never ending string of boats."
- Worm: "When the money is gone, it's time to move on."
- Mike: "You fucked his mother."
- Worm: "If you want to see this next card then you will stop speaking fucking Sputnik."
- Mike: "Not hungry?"
- Worm: "..with those fake Versace shirts and shit?"
- Worm: "I need your charity like I need your cock up my ass."
- Mike: "Amarillo Slim, the greatest proposition gambler of all time, held to his fathers maxim, 'You can shear a sheep many times, but skin him only once'".
- Mike: "It's immoral to let a sucker keep his money."
- Mike: "In Confessions of a winning Poker Player, Jack King said, 'Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.'"
- Random Guy: "Does he look like a man beaten by jacks?"
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