Poker Face

The bad: this movie has got an artsy fartsy style to it, that was annoying me from the very start. Why? Because I hate it when a director starts using slowmotion photography flashbacks and supposedly spiritual monologues, that dont make sense whatsoever.

BEWARE: this is definitely NOT a straigthforward pokergame movie. Forget about it. Little to none action. Only a tiny bit of supsense.

SKIP the entire first hour. The (little bit) of suspense that there still is, can only be experienced after an entire first hour, wherein nothing much happens AT ALL, besides Russell Crowe looking deep and mysterious into the distance for ages on end and mumbling to himself about deep thoughts and feelings.

What the heck is this movie about?

Ruined by a director, who just doesnt know how to tell a solid story.

It only lasts 1 hour and 20 minutes. I guess they had to cut out a lot of scenes that dragged this movie down even more.

Bad editing. Cheap photography. Even cheaper and ridiculous dialogues. And the story? Pfff, really, this movie is disjointed from the very start.

Not entirely terrible, but definitely missing supsense, missing spark and punch and most of all missing a coherent storyline with credible characters.

Artsy fartsy flop. Sorry...I tried to like it, because I really dig Russell Crowe as an actor, but this time around he couldnt save this movie from failing...

Sorry, Mr. Crowe.. writing & directing do not seem like your forte. Poker Face has so little to do with poker.. or friendship, or betrayals, or anything meaninful for that matter. It's just a blandly written, blandly performed, blandly directed film with no takeaways. For a film branded as an action-crime-thriller, it does no favors to any of the genres. Why was Liam Hemsworth (32) cast as Crowe's (58) childhood friend? Every character is painted in broad strokes, not giving us any particular reasons to care - I simply couldn't buy into Crowe's "virtuous, wealthy guy" character at all (a tad too indulgent?). The action itself is surprisingly ordinary, even when a subplot regarding a heist slowly develops.

Russel Crowe directed this action thriller drama and it was a decent attempt. However, it falls short of the expectations we have from him as an actor at least. His acting also took a dip perhaps due to directorial burden as he was not at his usual best. Movie started off as a fairly good premise and it started to build on the characters but then the plot got very muddled up with too many things going on simultaneously towards the later half. Revenge plot alone could have developed it into a reasonable movie on its own but the addition of the thugs angle made it neither here nor there. Overall a good one time watch and I rate it as 6/10.

This movie serves you with a triple dose of Russell Crowe. Acting, directing and screenplay. Let me tell you, there are very few people that talented on earth that can do all three successfully, and Crowe is not one of them. Other than beautiful scenery, cars, architecture and art you don't get much here. If you are satisfied with just that you might be ok with this movie, but if you are looking for a good thriller, look somewhere else.

Couple of things I disliked about this movie: 1. It's kinda boring and the overall action is silly. 2. The casting was done based on popularity and not based on fit for the role (RZA, Liam Hemsworth). Also, if you have a group of childhood friends, should they not be at the same age as grown-ups? The characters are all annoying. Morally deficient and thus failing to pull any emotions from the viewers. You are rich and made all the wrong decisions, who cares.

Third thing is the Poker. I think Poker fans will be really disappointed by this movie, having the name and the art suggest it is something to do with high-level card game, but other than a random event here and there, there is really nothing to do with poker, and really doesn't showcase the professionalism behind a Texas-Holdem game for example. In short, if you intend to watch this movie for some nice poker moves, you will be deeply disappointed.

Some good points: If you are an art lover, there are a few dialogues there discussing art in an interesting way and also I really liked the first 10 minutes intro of the movie, unfortunately it goes downhill from there, all the way to a predictable and pointless ending. Even the cars are boring and the car race is pointless and un-exciting, to the point where it feels production was careful not to risk scratching the cars before returning them to the rental car agency.

To sum up- don't spend your time and hard earned money on this one. Exact score: 44 / 100.

Russell Crowe plays a billionaire who has to confront his own mortality, so he does it in a very billionaire-ish manner. Only problem is his plans are interrupted by art thieves...

It's well filmed and almost worth watching for the scenery and camera work alone. The real issue with Poker Face is that it wants to be too many things and doesn't succeed in any special way at any of them. It's not much of a drama about life and mortality, though it is a little bit; it's not much of a thriller though there's some crime and betrayal; Action? Forget it (though it does try to tease at it with fast cars and a few guns).

It's basically a boyhood to adult buddy film with lots of cash thrown at it. It's okay, you probably won't feel bad for watching it, but you won't be telling many people about it either.