MOVIE COMPANY: Miramax Films
CAST: Matt Damon, Edward Norton, John Turturro, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol
DIRECTED BY: John Dal
RATING: R
INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE URL: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0128442
TYPE OF MOVIE: Crime, Drama
DURATION: 121 minutes
A law school student (Matt Damon) loses his tuition money and everything else he has saved in a high stakes poker game. Learning his lesson (he thinks), he vows to his girl friend (Mol Gretchen) to give up playing forever. That lasts until his best friend (Edward Norton), a notorious card shark, is released from prison and drags him back into the circuit to pay debts he has incurred to a Russian mobster (John Malkovich). John Turturro also appears as a career poker player and Martin Landau plays a law professor who understands his student’s need to be something other than what is dictated to him. (IMDB)
DVD EXTRAS:
• Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
• Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen
• Theatrical trailer(s)
• Widescreen letterbox format
KNOWN DVD SECRET(S):Â None that I know of
DVD REVIEW:
We all know that Matt Damon, Ed Norton and John Malkovich are talented actors. As for “Rounders”, it would seem that the audience who would really love this film are Poker fans.
You can get into the psychology of Poker and strategies but when it comes down to it, may it be a arm wrestling movie, a surfing movie or a log cutting movie, if you focus on that certain type of action and you enjoy it, you will enjoy that movie. This is no “Boiler Room” or “Fight Club”. It’s a movie about gambling, underground card clubs and situations that Poker fans will salivate over.
I’m not one of those. I really didn’t care for the movie as well as Malkovich’s Russian acting. It’s not about relationships, it’s all about gambling and learning a lesson from it.
As for the DVD, it’s completely bare bones, since it is an older release. Well, at least you get a trailer.
THE MOVIE:Â C-
THE DVD EXTRAS: D-
THE DVD OVERALL:Â D+