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Store Roulette: 4 Dogs Playing Poker
by Christian De Matteo
Wimpy
So you go to the video store
on a whim, and not for anything in particular. Something catches your eye.
You're talking to your girlfriend on the cell phone not paying full
attention to the video selection in front of you. A film catches your
eyes, words across the front of it like, "The Suspense of Usual
Suspects and the relentlessness of Shallow Grave" and
"A Devilish Noir." You rent it.
Sometimes, you make a choice like this and you get the brilliant fun of The
Boondock Saints. Other times you strike out like a paraplegic baseball
player and get the unfliching suckfest that is 4 Dogs Playing Poker.
Whoever contributed the quote comparing this clichéd debacle to Shallow
Grave or The Usual Suspects should probably have all license
removed for critiquing film. The only thing this had in common with either
of those films is that is was also shot through a camera.
Forgive any SPOILERS that may be ahead, but I frankly don't think you can
further spoil this movie any more than you can further spoil a jar of
mayonnaise that's been sitting on a tar roof in the middle of the Mojave
desert.
Let me first say that I understand what happened to this film and feel
(just little bit) for the people involved. On the other side of the coin,
the fact that the director is also credited with a segment of a Sepultura
video, explains a lot.
The movie tries to be one those "hip, young, and shocking" new
breed of crime movies, like Go without the comedy (not
intentionally anyway), or Made and maybe even striving for some Shallow
Grave. To make a comparison of this genre, The Boondock Saints
succeeded in this, Dogs doesn't at all.
The plot concerns four "best friends," none of them particularly
likable, kind of because of the acting, but more because the script
doesn't allow them to carry a single, distinct character trait for more
than one scene. The actors have to be what the director things he needs to
keep the mystery going for that scene. Olivia Williams maybe a raving
bitch in one scene and the sweetest, lovingest girlfriend you've ever seen
in the next. Ridiculous.
These four friends team up with Tim Curry, the reason for which we kind of
find out later when the director realizes this might be important. They
band together to steal a valuable statue from an Argentinean collector, on
the day of his daughter's wedding. They do this (in one of the most
uninteresting heist sequences I've ever scene) and get back. Enter the
"Boss," played interestingly by Forest Whitaker, who is the only
person who does any decent acting at all in this train wreck.
The long and the short of it is that he's found out the statue is not on
the boat it's supposed to be coming in on, and he's going to kill each of
them if it's not... unless they pay him ONE MILLION DOLLARS! (Sorry,
couldn't resist.)
Tim Curry dies, hung from a meat hook with his feet inexplicably cut off.
Whatever.
Now the four have to figure out what to do. Here's where the story swerves
terribly into Kevin Williamson territory. These four brain surgeons decide
that since Holly (Stacy Edwards, Driven) works in an insurance
company, they can get four policies for 1 Mil each on themselves and
through some ridiculous, convoluted and insanely stupid manner, one will
kill another one, the others will collect on the policy and, voila!, one
dead friend later, they’ll pay off Forest. Perfect, right?
What the #@%!?
Somehow, this attempt at a hip, twenty-something noir turns into a
horrifically stupid teen, Screamesque, horror flick. And like all
films of that ilk, it contains not a wit of horror, danger, or suspense.
If these four had been anally assaulted, eviscerated and dipped in lemon
juice, I still wouldn’t have given a damn.
The “plot” goes from there, and I’d tell you what happened but
you’ve probably figured it out. Yeah, it’s that awful.
Like, I said, I feel for the team that put it together. It’s obvious
that someone got a neat idea about how to turn four friends against each
other, and didn’t know how to get to that point. So, they came up with a
“plot” that was a pure vehicle to get to the “killing each other”
part. Where they screwed up, at least one of the many places, is this: To
make a hip, crime flick, you got to have lines. I mean damn memorable
lines like, “I’m sorry, did I break your concentration?” This is
what makes a film cool, hip and QUOTABLE. There isn’t a single, solitary
line of dialogue in this film even worth hearing.
Badly acted, badly written, and horribly directed. Don’t believe me? Try
this: When the boat arrives and the one who betrayed the other three picks
up the statue and gets all five cuts of the pay (Olivia Williams, ha!),
she walks away and the camera pans up (the only noticeable camera move in
the film) to the name of the boat… Faithful.
Ugh. Save your money, rent The
Boondock Saints.
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