Four Dogs Playing Poker

There is one thing I dislike the most about certain movies, and this is when they pretend to be smart, well-made, and to be something, while they indeed lack details, arguments, script, and the acting capacity of its stars is not even considered. This is all about "Four Dogs Playing Poker". At a certain moment you feel that you left your brain somewhere else, because you can't believe what you are seeing. One can be mislead, though. You see big names, i.e., Tim Curry, Forrest Whitaker, playing small roles, and you immediately presume that you are in front of a piece-of-art that has convinced those big names to work almost for free just to help a young and gifted director. I don't want to judge their intentions, but I can tell that the only good thing about "Four Dogs Playing Poker" is that keep you all the time filling up all the details that are missing. I don't want to tell you what details are missing, I prefer that you rent the movie, see it when you have nothing to do, and challenge your brain to find out all those things that make no sense at all. If the movie wanted to play a little bit serious, it should have joked about the stupid idea of its main characters, and show how unproductive it was at the end. That would have at least save the day. In a scale of 1 to 10, let not be so hard on them, let's give a 3+.

What's the concept behind the painting "Four Dogs Playing Poker"? Poker is a game of luck, but winning involves bluffing, lying, and aggressiveness. Dogs think they can handle these human traits, but they're just dogs. Predictable. Emotional. Easy tells.

This movie is about four childhood friends who are all in danger of dying.

To save themselves, they concoct a scheme to sacrifice one of them for the sake of the others. But they want to keep things anonymous to alleviate guilt, and that's where they stop trusting each other. Like four dogs playing poker, trying to figure out the other dogs' motives, not knowing who to trust...

The details sometimes fall by the wayside in order to set up this very interesting idea, but I found the story itself to be gripping. I had to watch the whole thing to see what happened.

Can you trust YOUR childhood friends if all your lives were on the line?

Previous comments seem to be either one of extreme hate or pleasure. I find the extremes fascinating. I think this movie was average. Not great, but worthwhile watching. One that you need to watch twice to get the point. I found no part of it boring. The use of poker in the title has to do with the bluffing, faking, lying and not showing all of ones cards.

On the whole it is much better in terms of the story than most action films.

If plots making sense was a requirement for a good movie, then I guess there are very very few movies worth watching. The plot for example of Master and Commander, a movie I really enjoyed, was based on an absurd disregard for the navel power situation in 1805 wherein Britian had obtained complete mastery over the oceans (e.g., Battle of the Nile, 1803). So why should we attack Four Dogs for a gimmicky premise. Name a movie that doesn't involve some gimmick or suspension of disbelief to get the ball rolling.

To me the only unexplained part is why the bad guy wants a million from them, but that might also be part of the double crossing.

In Four Dogs, the fact that so called friends agree so easily to kill one another was one of the points -- their friendship wasn't worth a half million. It must also be kept in mind that they were being manipulating into agreeing with the idea and it was done so subtly that it is not until you see the movie for the second time that you can see the manipulations that are going one. There's actually a lot of subtly in the movie. But also notice how several members of the group were all prepared to double cross the rest. The main double crosser however did give at least one of them a chance.

It is very doubtful that the insurance scam idea would work, but the main characters didn't clue into the main problem with it -- back dating the payments on the policies -- thats a whole lotta fraud. But its a mute point, there is never any mention at the end of the film about cashing the policies in! Suggesting that the whole insurance scam was part of the doublecrossing plots and a bluff. It isn't important how fast the money will be paid out, whats important is that they players in this high stakes game, think that cashing in the policy on one of them, will save the rest.

The fact that the ships crew had a Mexican accent (I'm assuming that the Argentinian commentator meant accent, not language, cause the language is the same), isn't that surprising since the ship has an English name and is headed toward Los Angeles (home of a very large Mexican population) -- so its more likely to have a Mexican speaking crew than an Argentinian crew.

The whys or practicalities of the movies aren't really the main issues. The most interesting part of the movie is the crisis, the cut throat solution they come up with, how they are manipulated into the solution, and how the solution unravels (as planned).

There a very interesting thing going on when one of the characters asks another if he could really kill her.

I bought this DVD for 2 euro 90 at a gas station. So my expectations where not that high. When i buy a movie like this with some famous actors, I don't expect it to be good, but you never know. Am i watching a mistake of a famous actor. I really love Forest Whittaker, and after watching the movie nothing is changed about that. He probably red the script and saw the possibilities. Anyway Looking from this angle, i always expect to stop halfway the DVD and continue doing something else. Because the price was so cheap, that there would be no other option than a bad movie This movie is indeed not fantastic, the acting is poor and over the top, but it is a movie which keeps you watching. In fact i felt some fear watching the end. So my 2 euro 90 where well spent. But i do agree that the end result could have been much better. Intriguing movie, not very well done, but amusing and worth watching! I still try to understand if i understood the whole movie. But who cares for 2 euro 90

**SPIOLERS WITHIN**

Four Dogs Playing Poker had a very good premise. Unfortunately, the plot gaps kill the movie. The following are issues I had with the movie:

1. In a game of life or death, they let one person go into the bank to place the life insurance policies in the safe deposit boxes. Ultimately, this leads to the demise of the other characters. Are you kidding me?? Gee, you think she might cheat the other people and save her own life?? Surely not. Lets trust her to go in alone.

2. There is no way they could have collected on life insurance policies that quickly, especially in a situation as suspicious as it would have been.

3. Incriminating messages are left on various answering machines. These people are apparently not too bright.

I will stop at this point, although I could go on forever. The acting was mediocre AT BEST. A couple of scenes were really corny, including the leaping between buildings and the woman falling off the ladder. If you are looking for a movie that is realistic, this is absolutely not it.

5 out of 10.