Rounders

I find myself in quite a dilemma having to write about a movie in which two of my hobbies collide. Poker-wise I would say 'Rounders' is an pretty intresting movie, from which I with my very limited knowledge of Poker might even have learned a little bit. Movie-wise I didn't thought that it delivered too much, except allowing a pretty realistic view into the life of a full time/whole hearted Poker gambler.

'Rounders' basically tells two different stories, one is about a very talented Poker player (Damon), that somehow tried to get rid of his nasty habbit and the other story is about a grifting friend (Edward Norton) of the said poker player. He is the one who had brought him to Poker and together they've been having a pretty good time, winning and stealing money from fellow unaware Poker players. Now that the grifter just got released from jail, he immediately wants to team up and start working together again, as he ows some money to one of the local gang leaders.

At first the both of them get lucky, but once one of their scams blows up, they find themselves in even deeper trouble than before. In the end Damon will have to break with his friend, in order to come clean and try to honestly win a huge amount of money, to overcome the deadly thread of a gang leader to which he ows a lot of dollars. After all he always wanted to be a professional Poker player and these matches would show if he had what is needed to get one of them...

All in all I felt that 'Rounders' could have been a much better movie without the 'grifter' story inside it, yet I guess it has been put in there for all of those in the audience who didn't really knew and liked the game of Poker. I think this balancing act did hurt the movie, if the filmmakers decided on going "all Poker", they certainly would have had a slightly smaller audience, yet the movie could have been called a serious Poker movie. Like this it is something in between, intresting at times, ridiculous at others.

My recommendation is to only watch 'Rounders' for the poker. I think you should at least know something of the rules in order to fully enjoy it, if you're lucky you might even learn a little something in the end. For all the movie lovers out there I'd rather recommend to skip it, there isn't really anything new or intresting about it, if you want to watch a serious and real entertaining movie about grifting rather watch The Grifters, which I thought was absolutely spectacular.