The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 211 Days to go: 148
Movie #227: Rounders
On the surface, Rounders is about poker, and while it’s the only real poker movie I’m aware of, it’s also one of the best movies poker could ever hope to have about itself. These guys get poker. I don’t play the kind of poker these guys play — I don’t play high stakes, and I don’t hustle and I certainly don’t visit shady poker houses in seedy corners of the city (any city) — but for anyone who is a serious player (at any level), Rounders knows what it’s like. It knows poker is about the read of the people you’re with. It knows it’s a skill. It knows other people don’t get it. It knows most people can’t play for shit. It knows sometimes you’re the sucker. It knows splashing the pot is a dick move and the only people who string bet are schmucks who think they’re big time even though everything they know about the game came from stupid movies. It knows the rush of getting a great read or playing a perfect hand. It knows the obsessiveness with which you replay all your worst beats. It knows there’s actually information to be gleaned by watching other people play. It knows everything.
Mostly, Rounders knows that the real draw of poker is not the cash. The cash is a benefit; the cash is a necessity. The real draw is the prestige of sitting down with a monster player and out-playing him. The real draw is in the finding out of whether or not you can hang. I’m not a high stakes player, and I don’t get to play nearly as often as I’d like to anymore, but I promise you I could sit down against anyone heads-up. Me and Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) have that in common — that confidence, at least. In my case, it’ll probably be a lifetime before I can put anyone’s money where my mouth is, but such is life. We can’t all be Johnny Chan.
On the surface, Rounders is about poker, and it’s a great poker flick, but it’s also about friendship. Mike has this no-good buddy from way back named Worm (Edward Norton), and the two are like brothers. Or at least, Mike has it in his head that they’re like brothers, so he lets Worm take advantage of him. Rounders is about that kind of toxic friendship, where the friends you had as a kid just aren’t your friends anymore — you’ve outgrown them, they haven’t grown up at all — but you keep hanging on. It’s about how tough it is to let go, and how easy it is to be drawn into their drama again, no matter how much time has passed. And as the realization gradually dawns on Mike that Worm is full of shit and not his friend at all, as he’s already in way too deep to dig himself out, it’s positively cringe-inducing. It’s a painful rite of passage, and it costs Mike a lot. It costs him his girlfriend Jo (Gretchen Mol, who was this fresh-faced little gem in 1998 that I have a hard time reconciling with the hard-scrabble Mrs. Darmody from Boardwalk Empire), and it costs him his potential law school career, though maybe he doesn’t care about that as much as he thought (because the movie is also about finding yourself). Norton and Damon actually have great chemistry as dysfunctional friends, and Norton’s Method acting really sells him as quite the worthless wastrel (who, quite frankly, talks the table way too fucking much). Their camaraderie and their dissolution both feel earned, and it adds a higher level of stakes to the film than the money involved ever could.
John Tuturro is kind of fabulously understated as all-knowing, no-playing grinder Joey Knish, and Famke Janssen is sexy as ever as fellow shark Petra, but the real scenery chewer is John Malkovich (naturally) as Teddy KGB. Of course, Malkovich’s accent is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard, and his ridiculously simplistic Oreo tell is like child’s play, but his hilarious pantomiming and gesticulating and trash talking are things of beauty not to be missed. Plus, Martin Landau is off to the side as the minister of sage life advice Professor Petrovsky, and what’s not to like about that?
My only complaint about Rounders, honestly, (except for not liking Worm at all, but that’s kind of the point) is that for a kid who’s supposed to be some sort of table-reading, tell-observing prodigy, Mike (or Matt Damon’s face, one) has more tells than just about anybody. You’d think someone would’ve picked up on that.
Then again, maybe Mike isn’t quite as good as he thinks he is. I could probably take him.
Viable Option 