Dead Money
I have to admit something, I have never excelled at playing poker. My emotional poker face is probably the culprit reason, which takes away all the elements of stoicism required for the sport and instead brings out my humorous side something out of a comedy film. Less of a ‘sexy’ shot and more of a horrible one. The game transcends my abilities in many aspects because it requires numerous calculative skills, time bound execution, and societal skills which I don’t have or don’t know how to execute. Similar to chess, I am aware of the primary functions of the game and the purpose of the players. The flops, rivers, and the likes however, remain incomprehensibly vague despite multiple attempts by people to clarify them throughout the years.
Seeing that, I find some good poker movies worth the time (like Robert Altman’s great works “California Split” and “The Cincinnati Kid”) and some that should be avoided (“Runner Runner” and “A Big Hand for the Little Lady”). Then there’s been ‘Dead Money‘. it’s hard for me to say whether it succeeds as a poker movie but in terms of the other aspects of the movie such as storytelling, suspense, thrill, or catchy personalities and events, it fails. It’s not that the film is bad – it’s just that it’s a bad film that only makes you think about the ever better films that claim to be good.
The film begins with a narrative of illegal poker gambling at Jack’s place where the characters consist of Andy the professional gambler (Emile Hirsch) and his med student girlfriend, Chloe (India Eisley) as well as LT, an ambitious officer (Peter Facinelli). However, a couple of masked intruders barge into the game, punching Jack in the face and robbing the whole lot. The players subsequently decide to end the game for that day but things don’t sound that simple. Mr. Jack is a complete mess. He is in huge debts and is looking for easy ways to get more money through whatever means possible. Mr. Wendell and the Uncle Lonnie Colin weren’t all exactly geniuses but were more than stupid enough to be greedy as well, so Mr. Jack decided it was a good idea to hire out some grunts to steal back what he placed on the table. They all did. When Uncle Lonnie is off to the side with Jack, Andy swipes out Jack’s cash and leaves.
Andy wakes up the next day as a loser having lost a number of games. He is however ready to pay off his current debts and decide to stay away from gambling in the short term. A realistic target until he walks into the gambling hall and is invited to play another game. This time, he wins almost every hand he plays. He finds himself in a high-stakes game where the quiet but devious Faizel (Jimmy Jean-Louis) oversees the action while the intimidating Bobby Kirkland (Brennan Brown) is at the table. Meanwhile, Jack and Wendell are left wondering how Andy was able to get the cash, and they head to his residence looking for him, and also take Chloe hostage when she appears unexpectedly. As Jack arrives at the gambling house and finds Andy has gone to play against Faizel, he urges to win over $500.000 or Chloe will be executed, a threat which gets more complicated as at that point Andy’s luck has started to run out.
Drawing from my words, “Dead Money” is better compared with the ‘90’s crime flicks inspired by Tarantino and ‘Rounders’. There are vivid dialogues, complicated plots and swathes of people shooting at each other’s heads or bleeding from some prior battle. This script written by Josh Wilcox involves itself with all the wrinkles, but doesn’t stretch itself out over much in terms of breadth. Making us bear witness to the actions of a few idiots trying to be intelligent about the game stage and the few intricacies of poker, which the voice over narrates in a rather engaging manner and in heavy detail.
The games themselves aren’t quite as number geared as some of the ridicules ones found in a movie called maverick. However, they are still not that entertaining either, as the Director Luc Malpoth goes about the scenes with the same technique as the script overall which is shiny but ineffective. He never does manage to build suspense, not even when characters have swords drawn ready to slice one another’s heads off or when they have already drawn guns on one another’s heads.
There is not much for the actors to work with as the characters are only sketched out, with Hirsch being bland as the lead while most of the time Eisley is gagged and Keith, Haley, and Facinelli try to outdo each other into who gives the most outrageous performance (Harrison gets first consideration just for the nice way he describes how he is looking forward to using his share to set up his own cockfight).
That said, “Dead Money” is nothing more than the B movies of yore making it the A plot in a classic B-movie double feature. Unfortunately there is none of the spice that could have transformed it into something remarkable. Maybe poker lovers will be bored enough and wait for ‘Rounders 2: The Desolation of the Oreos’ while watching this. More likely however, the average viewer will wish to fold long before the credits do roll.
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