Shadows on the Wall | Dead Money

Dead Money

dir Luc Walpoth
scr Josh Wilcox
prd Sara Sometti Michaels, Seth Michaels
with Emile Hirsch, David Keith, India Eisley, Peter Facinelli, Jackie Earle Haley, Rory Culkin, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Jocelyn Hudon, Jeremy Biddle aka Yung Bleu, Noah Segan, Michael Malarkey, Brennan Brown
release US 13.Sep.24
24/US 1h38

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Card games are never very exciting on-screen, so our hearts sink when this film opens with a voiceover about poker strategy. While the script feels undercooked, with the usual plot turns and dialog that's little more than profanity-laced tough talk, director Luc Walpoth plays on genre cliches to build some slick, edgy tension. But the meandering plot and fuzzy point of view make it difficult to stay involved.

Professional poker player Andy (Hirsch) and his girlfriend Chloe (Eisley) hang out with a group of gamblers who wager about almost everything. One night a pair of masked men (Haley and Culkin) violently rob their game, and Andy discovers that they're working with his veteran gambler friend Jack (Keith). This puts Andy in significant danger, but instead of running off with Chloe and a bag of cash, he gets a seat at a seriously high-stakes table. Then when the bad guys make a move against Chloe, Andy's game becomes a do-or-die situation.

Because the film cross-cuts between Andy and Chloe and the awkward antics of the brutal thugs, there's no sense of perspective in the story. This means that everything feels almost naggingly predictable and, even worse, avoidable. It also doesn't help that much of what happens seems derived from the movies rather than real life. So even if it's all skilfully staged and performed, everything unfolds exactly as expected.

Hirsch gives Andy a laid-back charm, although there's nothing about his know-it-all voiceovers that convince us that he's some sort of card-playing mastermind. No, he's a gambling addict, unable to stop betting everything he has against terrible odds. Eisley's Chloe is more engaging, a smart, tough woman in a messy situation. The supporting cast adds plenty of spark to bring side characters to life, most notably Facinelli as a swaggering cop and Haley as a proper nutcase baddie.

Annoyingly, the climactic sequence relies on an elaborate card game for its tension, so it's fairly impossible to care. And it's also never interesting that the villains are constantly turning on themselves. This lack of originality leaves this fine-looking movie feeling badly constructed. Which of course makes it almost impossible to root for Andy and Chloe to get through all of this alive, simply because the rules of the genre tell us exactly what's going to happen.

themes, language, violence 14.Sep.24

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