Richie is trying to pay himself through college and it all goes wrong when he is cheated out of all his money on an online poker game by Ivan Block.
We get a little bit on Richie’s background that he failed on Wall Street and went back to college to do his masters but was making money by getting students (and teachers) to sign up online to a gambling website. Something which was banned on campus. When he gets a warning about this he decides he must go all in to try to win more money. He thinks he has the game cracked but notices something strange about the “players” he is up against. These leads him to not only losing all is money but heading to Costa Rica to confront Ivan Block.
The trailers make this film look very stilish and slick, which I guess for very brief moments it is just that. But we don’t get the cool film we expect, instead its rather sloppy and tries to be way to clever for itself. It tries to keep you guessing what is going to happen next and how it is all going to unravel. I doubt you will really be that bothered by the end as I certainly didn’t really care about how it was going to end and what happened to Richie he was not a likeable character at all.
I have to mention John Heard and how badly he has aged! I’ve thought that about a few films he’s been in over the past few years, like at first you don’t totally recognize him. Then realize who he is! I guess his role as Harry, Richie’s father was to show that he actually wasn’t too far away from the gambler he never wanted to be. Ben Affleck took Block to a quite creepy level but maybe not extreme enough to have a bigger impact in this film.
It was all about the gamble and who was willing to put the most in, even with the FBI around who was actually helping Agent Shavers and who’s side would he be on at the end? I guess that’s the main focus of the film. The “love” interest scenes weren’t exactly the best either and that whole part could have really been missed out. So overall the film is a bit of a mess really, you won’t miss much if you decide against seeing this one.
