The best poker movie ever made, with Matt Damon & Ed Norton.

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Product Description

Master poker player Mike gives up gambling for law school but is lured back into the game when his friend gets out of prison and is in over his head with a ruthless Russian card shark.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 7-SEP-2004
Media Type: DVD

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3952 in DVD
• Brand: DAMON,MATT
• Released on: 2004-09-07
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 121 minutes

Amazon.com
A little drunk on its own arcane exotica as a gambling movie, Rounders is a film that takes us inside a world of high-stakes card players but falls short on such essentials as character development, relationships, that sort of thing. Still, it is a real curiosity, written by a couple of guys (David Levien and Brian Koppelman) who appear to know something about the dark underbelly of card hustling for fun and profit. Matt Damon stars as a reluctant law student who can't put aside his subterranean career of playing poker and blackjack for big money. After he loses his post-grad nest egg to a weird Russian kingpin (John Malkovich)--and also loses his disgusted girlfriend (Gretchen Mol) in the process--Damon's character turns to an unreliable old buddy (Edward Norton) for a dangerous game of sharking wherever there happens to be a game underway: frat boys, cops, bad dudes, you name it. Norton appears to be living out every young actor's fantasy of re-creating Robert De Niro's prototypical head case in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, and while his performance is burdened by obvious quotation marks, his estimable talent still shines through. Damon's charm and intelligence bring some oomph to the curiously flat proceedings, and while his hushed, soul-bearing scenes with Martin Landau (as a law professor who takes a shine to the kid) seem gratuitous, they're still nice to watch. Behind all this is director John Dahl (Red Rock West), who is not exactly at the top of his game here but who brings his distinctive toughness to the crime-noir tone. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker
Screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien have given some crackerjack card-shark dialogue to two hot young actors-Matt Damon and Edward Norton-and together with John Dahl's atmospheric direction they've all made a dream of a poker movie. While the plot is creaky (both "The Cincinnati Kid" and "The Hustler" weigh in) and women take a back seat to poker-playing buddies (Famke Janssen and Gretchen Mol seem cast purely to establish the heterosexuality of the lead characters), there is a sleekness to the gambler-in-debt-to-the-Mob storytelling that's quite pleASINg. Norton has the flashier role, and at times he pulls it together like a young De Niro-he can be amazingly, destructively attractive. But Damon is the real star here, and his performance (including an emotionally nuanced voice-over) is as solid and understated as his work in "The Rainmaker." -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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Customer Reviews

Great Casino Movie!
A great Casino movie with a great cast! Gives a lesson to be learned! This is truly a classic!

Great Poker Movie
Rounders is a great movie about the underground poker clubs in NY.
I do what it at least once a year.

ROUNDERS: The Poker Movie
Rounders is a movie that is guilty of coming out a couple years too early. It was released in 1998...and of course a few years later Poker was shown on every channel there is most days of the week. I guess it's all in the timing!

Still, the movie is an excellent cross of mob movie and gambling lesson. Matt Damon plays the greatest friend in the world to Edward Norton...until it gets him into the biggest debt with the worst person. Then it's time to let the cards and the poker-faces do the settling. Rounders gets better and better each time I watch it and if you're a fan of Poker (particularly Texas Hold 'Em) then you need to watch this movie.

For DVD afficianados, there's plenty of extras. Chief among them two decent commentary tracks. One is movie insightful with the director and Edward Norton. The second commentary has Johnny Chan and 3 of the top Poker players in the world...it's a fun listen.

I highly recommend you see Rounders. At the least it'll give you a two-hour break from the tables.