By Pete Hammond
Story
Stop us if you think you’ve heard this one before: Alex Stillman (
Bret Harrison) is a college kid who shows a real talent for poker. He is discovered by legendary player Tommy Vinson (
Burt Reynolds), who at the insistence of his wife (
Maria Mason) retired from the game 20 years earlier but sees a younger version of himself in Alex and offers to train him for some major tournaments. Although their meeting of minds seems initially promising, the whole thing falls apart when Alex starts a brief fling with a girl (
Shannon Elizabeth) he later finds out is a prostitute Tommy paid off to keep the kid happy. The two are eventually reunited in a different way when Tommy decides to make a comeback on his own and ends up competing against his protégée in a televised tournament worth $8 million to the eventual winner.
Acting
Although
Reynolds has top billing on the end credits, marketing materials list
Bret Harrison in first position above Burt in the hope that the bland TV star (
Reaper, Grounded For Life, etc.) can draw his young fans. NO one is likely to turn out for this mis-guided
Color of Money wannabe. That 1986 film had a different game (pool) and an identical plotline, but it also had
Tom Cruise,
Paul Newman in an Oscar winning role and direction by
Martin Scorsese. Here you have
Reynolds and
Harrison sleepwalking through the banal dialogue and pedestrian situations.
Reynolds’ toupee shows more interest than he does! And
Harrison is thoroughly unconvincing as a guy we are meant to believe can jump right from college to the very top of the poker world in no time flat. Elizabeth actually makes the strongest impression in the film but she has an underwritten part and three scenes.
Mason has the thankless role of
Reynolds’ long-suffering wife, while
Charles Durning and
Jennifer Tilly can probably find most of their almost non-existent roles on a cutting room floor somewhere.
Direction
Director
Gil Cates Jr. does no favors for his own screenplay (co-written with Mark Weinstock) with static unimaginative shots and coverage of the numerous poker games so sloppy that he makes
Lucky You look like a masterpiece. The performances all clearly suffer from his by-the-numbers direction as well. To be fair, it is extremely difficult to make card games compelling to watch on screen but most of his shots look like he just set the camera up in one position, called ‘Action’ and went out for a smoke. He should have rented
Steve McQueen’s 1965 poker classic
The Cincinnati Kid to see how a real director (Norman Jewison) could make this stuff visually interesting. Cates is the son of the veteran producer who runs the Oscar show. On the basis of
Deal at least Cates Sr. won’t have to worry about finding seats for his son at next year’s ceremony.