Who's in It: Bret Harrison, Burt Reynolds, Shannon Elizabeth, Jennifer Tilly
The Basics: Poker?! I don't even know her! I've been waiting a long time to use that line in a review, and now I finally get my chance. Well, actually, I've had a lot of chances lately with the brain-numbing onslaught of poker-player-looking-for-one-last-chance movies. And here's another one: about a veteran pokerer teaching a rookie how to win and win big. And it made me wish I was watching Lucky You again.
What's the Deal? Visibly cheap production values? Check. Script written in sleep? Check. Weird and loud song score of rocker people yelling stuff like, "I DON'T WANNA PLAY THIS GAME NO MORE!" when one of the poker guys gets mad and quits playing poker? Check. Elizabeth wondering why she has to play a one-dimensional prostitute with approximately 12 lines of dialogue? Check. That guy from Reaper in the lead, praying his show survived the Writer's Strike? Check. Endless scenes of poker-playing? Multiple checks. Me taking a nap in the middle of it? Biggest check.
Featuring the Wasted Talents Of: The feisty, cool, check-her-out-in-Bound Tilly as a poker champ who spends every single one of her scenes throwing down cards and muttering pointless stuff. Until she completely disappears from the movie entirely. That happens. The whole thing should have been about her.
The Big Orange Elephant in the Room: Steel yourself for the presence of Reynolds as the old-timer poker shark. Not only does he seem annoyed to be there (but not nearly as peeved as he was in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale), but he's gone out of his way to alter himself from the neck up into a kind of Burt Reynolds puppet — face stretched beyond recognition, burnt-sienna makeup, jet-black dye on hair and eyebrows and mustache. His head is in its own movie — a documentary about geriatric self-loathing.