Dead Money
Dead Money
Dead Money: I have to admit, poker is one of the few games in which I’ve never been particularly skilled. A large part of it is that my expression while playing tends to look more like Zero Mostel in “The Producers” than Amarillo Slim. Additionally, possessing some of the skills necessary to excel in such a game which include having an aptitude for rapid calculations or a natural appreciation for human relationships, aren’t really in my wheelhouse. Just like chess, I know how to play the game and what the player’s objectives are. But everything else in between, such as flops and rivers, is something which people have been trying to explain to me for years with no real success.
I’m no stranger to poker as I’ve watched enough movies to tell the worthy ones such as Robert Altman’s California Split and The Cincinnati Kid and the unworthy ones, Runner Runner and A Big Hand for the Little Lady. I have now seen Dead Money. While I cannot comment on the grippingness of the game, I can safely say that the portrayal was lacking in what should be the bare essentials of the movie: tension, excitement and even interesting and vibrant characters and situations. It’s not the worst movie, but it’s an average one and concerns the viewer only in how it definitely does not compare to films that in comparison do it better.
The film begins with the domestic gambling of an inveterate gambler, Jack (David Keith); poker professionals Andy (Emile Hirsch), his cantankerous med student girlfriend Chloe (India Eisley), and promising officer LT (Peter Facinelli) are present at Jack’s illegal poker game. Several armed men barged in rather abruptly, broke Jack’s nose, and stole the game’s profits. The participants decide it is time to call it a night after the incident.
When Andy gets to the house of Jack to pick up Chloe’s book bag, he learns that Jack really did try to rob his own game. This bizarre scheme was executed with the help of drug-addled scumbags Wendell (Jackie Earle Haley) and Uncle Lonnie (Rory Culkin), who had been ferociously beaten to life. As Andy escaped detection from both Jack and Wendell when the two were on Uncle Lonnie, Jack hurries to grab the cash and leaves.
The very next day, Andy, who has been experiencing cold feet, decides to capitalise on the moment by first settling his outstanding obligations, and then withholding his activities for some time. It is a good plan, but it falls apart when he actually wants to settle his payment and finds himself once again within a game whose treatment is more like a vice. This time, he shoots the lights out in all kinds of ways. In the next several hours, one hot hand follows another, even when he’s playing in a high-stakes mismatch organized by the sinister Faizel (Jimmy Jean-Louis) with a special appearance from absent but famous player Bobby Kirkland (Brennan Brown).
At the same time, Jack and Wendell understand that it was Andy who was left with the available money and proceed to his home to search for him, taking in tow a now unreasonably aggressive Chloe. Once Jack gets the hint that Andy is at Faizel’s, he too appears forgetting Andy is lucky and tells him to get $500,000 or Chloe will be sacrificed, which becomes worse when Andy’s luck seems to vanish at the most inopportune time.
As you may be able to tell with my description, Dead Money is somehow best described as a cross between Rounders as well as any of the many Tarantino styled films on crime that came out in the late 90s. It has too much of stilted and gaudy dialogue, plots that are way too convoluted and more often than not there are lots of characters with either a gun trained on a head or recovering from losing one in a fist fight. Josh Wilcox’s screenplay ticks the boxes in so far in terms of superficial details but that is all there is to it. This means all that is left to do is watch a lot of primitive morons performing primitive tasks while once in a rare while, thick and slow details about poker aspects are generously provided.
The games themselves are not quite as far-fetched as the stylized ones exaggerated in a film such as Maverick. They also fall somewhere short of that in terms of entertainment value because the director, Luc Malpoth, treatment is stylish but shallow which is similar to that of the screenplay. He does not really create any proper sense of tension, not even when there are scenes when different characters have bullets with their names on them or when they are pointing guns at one another’s heads.
The performances don’t have much to work with in terms of the characters – Hirsch plays the lead in a rather generic manner, Eisley is having her mouth duct taped and mostly sits on a chair for the major part of the screen,while Keith, Haley and Facinelli seem to be in an act to see which one of them is able to bring out the most hammed performance. (Mine is probably Haley, especially how he says he will spend his share on establishing his own cockfight in the most dreamy voice ever).
At last, “Dead Money” is just a new version of old B movie, meat and potatoes entertainment offering which works as the less advertised second part of a double program. But there is no such spice in the picture that could potentially turn it into a very brilliant and remarkable one. Maybe people who are into poker will find it quite acceptable, at least till they see ‘Rounders 2: The Desolation of the Oreos’. Otherwise, most viewers won’t be able to dare to place a bet for quite some time at all.
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- Genre: Thriller
- Country: United States
- Director: Luc Walpoth
- Cast: Emile Hirsch, David Keith, India Eisley
