Film review: 'Liar's Poker'
If someone created a Macho Film Festival devoted to cinematic curios suffering from testosterone overload, "Liar's Poker" would win major awards. Such a festival would, however, constitute the only potential venue for this silly, swaggering film. Even the most macho male is likely to giggle at all the absurd posturing and menacing glances that proliferate in this negligible film.
"Liar's Poker" played this year at the Nortel Palm Springs Film Festival before finding its way into a few Los Angeles and Orange County theaters this weekend via self-distribution. The Chicago commodities traders-turned-film producers who backed this venture will soon learn the harsh truth: This is a film without a market. And its sole hook is that this marks the "biggest film role to date" for Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
It's hard to say what the film is about. At the beginning, four men take a solemn and mostly silent car ride into the countryside for a "fishing trip." It's clear that not everyone is going to survive this particular fishing expedition.
Flashbacks reveal duplicitious action and double-crosses among these smarmy characters, whose real business is hard to decipher. They appear to deal in cars and a nightclub. Everyone grunts cryptic, mostly monosyllabic dialogue while staring at one another with hard eyes.
Richard Tyson spends the movie puffing on stogies and issuing arrogant orders. Jimmy Blondell sullenly takes those orders between repeated trips to the bathroom. (He has a nervous bladder.) Caesar Luisi uses his beefed-up bulk to loom menacing while saying little. And Flea mostly looks like an anxious rabbit.
Debuting writer-director Jeff Santo films all this in tight shots within sterile environments that reveal actors with few resources beyond squints, stares and sneers.
The film ends in a bloodbath that is as predictable as it is ludicrous.
LIAR'S POKER
North Branch Entertainment
A Savino Brothers production
Producers Carlos H. Sanchez, Billy Savino, Jeff Santo
Writer-director Jeff Santo
Executive producer Billy Savino
Co-executive producers Johnny Savino, Patrick Savino, Paul Savino
Director of photography Giles M. I. Dunning
Production designer William Peretti
Music Peter Himmelman
Costume designer Diah Wymont
Editor Kathryn Himoff
Color/stereo
Cast:
Jack Richard Tyson
Niko Caesar Luisi
Vic Jimmy Blondell
Freddy Flea
Running time -- 93 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
"Liar's Poker" played this year at the Nortel Palm Springs Film Festival before finding its way into a few Los Angeles and Orange County theaters this weekend via self-distribution. The Chicago commodities traders-turned-film producers who backed this venture will soon learn the harsh truth: This is a film without a market. And its sole hook is that this marks the "biggest film role to date" for Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
It's hard to say what the film is about. At the beginning, four men take a solemn and mostly silent car ride into the countryside for a "fishing trip." It's clear that not everyone is going to survive this particular fishing expedition.
Flashbacks reveal duplicitious action and double-crosses among these smarmy characters, whose real business is hard to decipher. They appear to deal in cars and a nightclub. Everyone grunts cryptic, mostly monosyllabic dialogue while staring at one another with hard eyes.
Richard Tyson spends the movie puffing on stogies and issuing arrogant orders. Jimmy Blondell sullenly takes those orders between repeated trips to the bathroom. (He has a nervous bladder.) Caesar Luisi uses his beefed-up bulk to loom menacing while saying little. And Flea mostly looks like an anxious rabbit.
Debuting writer-director Jeff Santo films all this in tight shots within sterile environments that reveal actors with few resources beyond squints, stares and sneers.
The film ends in a bloodbath that is as predictable as it is ludicrous.
LIAR'S POKER
North Branch Entertainment
A Savino Brothers production
Producers Carlos H. Sanchez, Billy Savino, Jeff Santo
Writer-director Jeff Santo
Executive producer Billy Savino
Co-executive producers Johnny Savino, Patrick Savino, Paul Savino
Director of photography Giles M. I. Dunning
Production designer William Peretti
Music Peter Himmelman
Costume designer Diah Wymont
Editor Kathryn Himoff
Color/stereo
Cast:
Jack Richard Tyson
Niko Caesar Luisi
Vic Jimmy Blondell
Freddy Flea
Running time -- 93 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/28/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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