El amo del juego

I'm a big fan of Dario Argento's work; his early works are true works of perfection and have seen most of his stuff and mostly his work do strikes many of emotions such as thrills, tension and brilliant over the top death scenes. But after during the late 90's to present most of his stuff have been hit and miss, and this one from reading the reviews have been classed as a miss. But In my opinion I actually rather enjoyed this effort from him, sure it doesn't have almost none of his trademark technique's. But on its own it does stand as an okay murder mystery.

Firstly the plot is a very interesting and intriguing one, we get the old serial killer playing cat and mouse with the police routine, and in this case we get a killer setting up an online poker game with the police force, while using an innocent woman as bait and if they lose, she dies. This does make for a very interesting story line and it does keep the viewer interested in seeing what happens, and I did feel for these victims in that situation, but the fact that nothing is shown, doesn't leave a lasting impression, as nothing is shown afterwards and kind of makes the outcome disappointing.

Plus it lacks the stunning visuals that Argento's normally provides, instead the look and feel of the movie, looks very standard, and more towards the mainstream side of things. But the two leads are very decent, Stefania Rocca as Anna was a very strong leading character, she does keep you interested and has a good presence on screen even with the bad dialogue, and Liam Cunningham makes for another good character as her partner John and even their forcibly written romantic subplot, they makes it believable and they do share great chemistry together, along with the both of them fighting their demons does anchor the story along at a nice pace. Also Slivio Muccino was another good addition as the computer wiz kid, he was just brilliant. But the other side characters were just forgettable and were just poorly written.

But some of the other aspects of this movie doesn't really work, like the whodunit mystery in which this movie very much relies on, wasn't really inventive or shocking, and the final climax was just very predictable and just plodded along, and even the motive or lack of and honestly had a hard time remembering who he was at the end and just seemed lacking and lazy, but the overacting at the end was rather fun.

All in all "The Card Player" is an okay serial killer mystery flick, but for fans of Dario's visual style, you will be sorely disappointed, as this just doesn't take any risks at all and feels just rather safe and plodding.

The Card Player' directed and co-authored by leading Italian filmmaker, Dario Argento is quite different from what I expected, based on Argento'' reputation based on his best known film, the horror classic, 'Suspiria' of about 20 years ago. This movie is much less Wes Craven and much more Alfred Hitchcock, although I think Argento does not quite measure up to the Great Hitchcock in his use of subtlety and surprise, although there are a few good surprises in this film.

While this movie was made by a thoroughly Italian cast and crew, except for Irish actor, Liam Cunningham, almost all the original dialog as we hear it in the film was spoken in English as it was filmed. Mistaking this for a horror film was easy based on the cover art and some of the blurbs on the package. And, these hints are not entirely misleading, as there is a fair amount of intentional horror based on a fairly extended threat of death to a victim seemingly unable to free herself from the situation, unlike Hitchcock's secret threat, suddenly sprung on the unsuspecting victim as in 'Psycho'.

The mechanics and most business of the story are ultramodern. The victims are kidnapped, bound, and gagged (albeit a bit amateurishly), and the prep sends an e-mail to a female police detective that in order to free the Vic, the police will need to have someone play computer poker with the prep, freeing the Vic by winning two out of three hands. The first victim is a British tourist, bringing the Irish detective attached to the UK consulate in Rome into the case. And, this detective happens to be a forensics expert, so a lot of his early investigations are straight out of the 'CSI' casebook. Although, none are so modern that you couldn't see almost the identical business in a movie made 50 years ago, just as you see them in the murder / suicide investigation scene in Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita'.

Not only is the plot much more a thriller than a horror show, but the quality of the acting, directing, and camera work is high as well. Unfortunately, I feel the writing, in the implausibility of many plot turns, is just a bit too weak. While Argento may be one of the best known Italian filmmakers working today, his scripts fall far short of the great plot and dialog of Fellini and Bertolucci.

One of the very first weaknesses is in the way the police failed to play the contact with the prep. Given the chance to bring in an expert poker player to play the hands, that task falls wholly nilly to the female detective who is not only a poor poker player, but has a monkey on her back about gambling and poker, as her father committed suicide after a failure at cards. For the second kidnapping, the police happen upon a detective who knows something about poker, but who fails nonetheless. Only with the third victim do the police enlist the assistance of an expert computer poker player, who succeeds in effecting the release of the victim.

Explaining more implausibilities starts to give away some of the better parts of the plot, so I will stop there and note that this DVD has my very favorite feature, an audio commentary running the entire length of the film. The commentary is by the cinematic author, Alan Jones rather than by the director or his co-author or producer, but it's pretty good. Since, as the commentator notes, Argento does not film in any of the well-known tourist locations (except for a brief glimpse of the Pantheon and a scene in the Tiber), but in the 'real' bourgeois' Rome. So, commentator Jones gives us an orientation for where we are in Rome and on the events which help us understand the plot. He also points out the virtually total absence of blood in the film, which was a conscious decision by the director, since so many of his other films are so singularly bloody.

Of course it's not Dario's best, but it's not his worst. I give it a 5.5, leaning more on the 6 side.

Anna Mari (Taras Kostyuk) is a policewoman working with an Irish policeman (Liam Cunningham) and a young poker champ (Silvio Muccino) to catch a killer who kills his young female victims if the police loose a game of video poker.

This movie seems like an okay mix of "Silence of the Lambs", "Saw 2", and "CSI".

The music, like in all of Darios films, is great. The look of the dead bodies are also fantastic and spooky.

However, Phoebe Scholfield and Jay Benedict (both first time writers) did a horrible job of the dialogue. In fact, I didn't like most of the writing. It was confusing at times but as long as you don't think too deep into it, you can enjoy this as a neat little screaming-and-crying-girl flick with great special effects and so-so kills. They're so-so because most of them are offscreen and similar, but towards the end they get great and unique.

So you could easily enjoy this if you just want to pass the time, but don't expect another Argento classic.

What can I say about this film? It certainly is not a typical Argento film (and I mean that in a very broad sense - there are some things you expect from an Argento film, like gore, tension and a certain visual style), but is it really bad? Well, it's not a terrible movie but from the man that gave us Suspiria, Deep Red and Tenebrae I expected much more.

First of all it's not giallo but more of a run of the mill detective story. Now, this wouldn't be bad if it was a good detective story, but it's not. The identity of the killer was predictable and some parts of the story did not make any sense. On top of that, the acting was not very good and the music was at best tolerable. And the final scene was just bad and did not make much sense.

The only good things about the movie were some great shots of Rome, and a couple of good, powerful scenes (like the first 2 murders) that reminded me a little of Argento's better films.

It's not a very bad movie, it's just a mediocre one. But since it's an Argento movie I expected much more. I give it 5 out of 10.

I have read the reviews complaining about that Dario has abandoned his style and all the gore to produce a tame TV-thriller. Far from the truth, according to me! I really think that this is the best he has done since "Opera". Granted, his stylish touch might seem to be muted compared to the baroque thriller of the 70s and 80s, but this cold and bleak atmosphere that he conjures up this time along with very brightly lit camera-work for most of the scenes, is something I enjoyed throughout! Sure, the gore is almost totally absent (apart from one scene), but as a whole this picture is much more efficiently done. The pace is fluent and unlike most of his other movies, there is actually no point where the characters just stand around and talk (and sometimes his players have been involved in some truly atrocious conversation) to fill out the time.

*MINOR SPOILER* And in "Il cartaio" the three main actors are actually very good! They are people you can care about and when they are in danger or die, you feel sorry for them. *END OF SPOILER* Like I mentioned before, I enjoyed the bleak look of the movie...as always classy camera-work in every frame of an Argento picture! And Claudio Simonetti's score is his best in years even though you might be just a little bit tired of it by the time the movie reaches it's conclusion. And talking about the finale, I found it both interesting, but at the same time also maybe a little bit of a letdown. However, the endings have been a bit weak lately in Dario's films. Not since "Tenebrae" has there been a really powerful conclusion. And two minor complaints finally...it was too easy to guess who the killer was. This has been mentioned before and I think it is true. The killer's identity could have been better camouflaged without a "certain scene" (you will know which one). And the card scenes went on too long on two occasions. The constant screaming from the victims became annoying in these scenes and I almost wanted them to die just to make them shut up! Otherwise, his best work in years and a film where he is not just content with repeating an old formula (like in "Sleepless" which I liked anyhow), but is actually trying to find a whole new path in his art.