Writer: Doug Buchanan, Greg Francis (Screenplay)
Starring: Beau Mirchoff, Ron Perlman, Giancarlo Esposito, Titus Welliver, Michael Eklund, Ron Eldard, Halston Sage
Plot: When you become a detective in Warsaw Indiana – you go to Poker Night, where you play against some of the best cops in the business. They tell you stories about their time on the job – their successes and failures. When new Detective Stan Jeter leaves the game, he is caught by a vicious psychopath and locked in a basement. Using the stories he heard at Poker Night, he must match wits against his captor – and save not only himself, but the young girl trapped in the basement with him. Like Seven and Usual Suspect, Poker Night combines thrills and twists and turns that will leave you guessing till the very end.
There may be spoilers the rest of the review
Verdict: Complicated Crime Horror
Story: The Joker starts as Stan Jeter (Mirchoff) recounts what has happened after a poker night, where the shit hit the fan. The poker game is played between the biggest cops in town, Calabrese (Perlman), Bernard (Esposito), Maxwell (Welliver), Cunningham (Eldard) and Davis (Large). These cops trade stories about their biggest busts as Stan the rookie gets to learn lessons from the other cops.
Stan finds himself being abducted by a masked killer that has two rules, have sex with little girls and kill anyone who gets in the way. As Stan looks to survive his situation he always remembers the stories told by the rest of the cops.
Thoughts on The Joker
Characters/Performance – Stan Jeter is the rookie cop recently becoming a hero cop, which has gotten him to the high ranking cops poker night to learn their stories. He also must look for his own safety as he finds himself one of the latest victims of a serial killer. Calabrese, Bernard, Maxwell, Cunningham and Davis are the cops telling the stories and are all good characters.
Performance wise, Beau Mirchoff does struggle in this leading role against the bigger named supporting cast but mostly just because his character is stuck in three different stories and times. The rest of the cast does what they need to without being anything special.
Story – The story here finds us going through plenty of stories as the rookie hears all about veteran cops best stories while needing to fight a serial killer. The problem here is we have too many stories going on as we hope they do all connect by the final act, the way this is told is mostly a mess though.
Action/Crime/Horror – We have moments of action with the weak fight sequences or chases, this does help with the crime side of the story too and if we had focuses on just one part of it all we could have been sucked in, the horror is mostly about a serial killer do what he wants.
Settings – The settings are not anything special with random basement or poker game.
Special Effects – The effects are used well when needed but we don’t end up having too much going on with them.
Final Thoughts – This is a messy film that just spends too much time trying to get to the interesting part of the story.
Overall: Plain crime horror movie.
Rating