Given director John Dahl’s past work, most notably the wickedly
cool The Last Seduction, his latest effort,
Rounders, feels conspicuously square. The snappy lingo is there
as well as a handful of shady characters, but it doesn’t matter.
Rounders is blindingly bright, where The Last Seduction was appropriately
dark so as to put its seaminess in its proper place. Part of this
may lie in the casting of Matt Damon in the lead. With his golden
hair cut just so, his preppy clothes, and his class-president
smile, he looks as squeaky clean as an altar boy and not like
someone who rubs elbows with the sorts whose livelihoods mean
they sleep through the daylight hours.
That said, Rounders isn’t half bad.
Damon plays Mike, a guy with a hard-knocks childhood whose talent
at poker earns him his tuition to law school. But one of those
games, in a seedy, hidden-away establishment, leaves him minus
$30,000, so he calls it quits to live a straight-up life with
a real job and his perfectly legit girlfriend Jo (Gretchen Mol).
Nine months later, Mike gets drawn back in when his old buddy
Worm (Edward Norton) comes calling. Worm is a friend from way
back, a person for whom – despite a character that earns him the
nickname – Mike has fierce loyalty. The loyalty goes beyond giving
Worm a ride back into the city from prison. When Worm needs some
start-up funds, Mike gives it to him, and when he needs Mike’s
help in cleaning out a few rich suckers in a card game, Mike gives
that, too. Mike gives Worm everything, while Worm gives Mike nothing
but trouble.
The trouble is a debt of 25 grand that Worm owes to Teddy KGB
(a cartoonish John Malkovich), a Russian card shark with little
patience and a taste for Oreo cookies. To earn the money, Mike
and Worm go on a two-day card-playing spree. Mike doesn’t want
any problems, preferring to play without cheating. Worm, on the
other hand, can’t resist the quick kill of the “rounder” or hustler.
The result of Mike and Worm’s mad dash for cash nets them two
busted-up faces and empty pockets, so Mike makes an all-or-nothing
attempt at saving his ass by facing the man who took away his
$30,000 with a sweep of his arm – Teddy KGB.
Rounders is basically a con-man film that glorifies the skill
of making a quick buck. The choice of poker as the grift takes
the viewer past doors with those small, sliding windows and into
smoky rooms with mesh cages. It’s a world, even when it’s above-board,
that’s unfamiliar to nine-to-fivers. While Rounders never really
nails the lure of poker, it is successful in capturing the tension
that causes a nervous sweat – it’s in the reading of another man’s
tics, in the hesitation of throwing in more chips, and in the
slow, card-bending revelation of a hand.
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