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Reviews:
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Safe Bet: Rounders
Review
Christian De Matteo
SOLID
(Please forgive me for the Rolling Stone-esque, pseudo-clever,
very critic-like title to my review, but I couldn’t resist.
If you could have, then you are a better man than I.)
If there was ever a movie that defined in a completely
non-arguable way the SOLID category, Rounders
is it. You will not be
thinking about this movie days after seeing it.
You will probably not even be thinking about it an hour after.
It’s pure and simple escapist fun, done very well, with no real
bells and whistles. This is a good
movie, that’s all.
The story line is an old one, two friends (Matt Damon and Ben Aff—
oh, wait, sorry, not this time, I mean Ed Norton) get back together.
One gets out of jail and drags the one that’s gone straight
back into trouble. Oh, and
the “good” one must of course choose between his friend and his
girlfriend. You’ve seen
it before, and it’s done really well here.
Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting) does a fine job as an ex-star card player who’s
now working his way through law school in the workaday world, and Ed
Norton (Fight Club), does the
best job he could with the script and character as Worm— the name says
it all.
John Malkovich (Dangerous Liaisons) is very entertaining as a quiet and deadly
Russian gangster who runs the hottest game in town. Great actor that he is, his calm silence poses an adequate
threat and makes you worry for Mike, Matt Damon’s character. Gretchen Mol (The 13th
Floor) does a good job as the hot girlfriend and Martin Landau (The
X-Files movie) is excellent as Damon’s new mentor.
The performance of the movie, however, has to go to John Turturro
(Barton Fink), who long ago
proved he can play just about any part.
He plays an older man than he usually does and a wiser man very
believably, and is the most likable character of the movie.
And, of course, Famke Jansen (X-Men,
The Faculty) is beautiful.
One of the things that holds the movie back, is that Ed
Norton’s character Worm is never given a chance to show his good side.
Worm is completely dislikable from the start and the viewer
can’t understand what the connection ever was between stand-up-guy
Mike and under-the-table-guy Worm.
So, instead of giving the very capable Norton some more complex
acting to do, director John Dahl just has the writers tell us that they
used to be more similar but Mike has matured and gone straight.
Show, don’t tell is the old writing adage, and the film suffers
by not following it. Not
only that, but the lack of explanation also causes the viewer to go
through a good portion of the movie yelling at Damon for being such a
sucker.
Regardless, Rounders is a fun watch, distracting throughout and exciting in a
number of parts with a very good payoff at the end. Rounders won’t be
one of those films critics hail as a lost classic of perfect film-making
fifty years from now, but it will be one of those late night network
channel movies that you find yourself sitting through the end of.
I had a good time with it.
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