Four Dogs Playing Poker

What's the concept behind the painting "Four Dogs Playing Poker"? Poker is a game of luck, but winning involves bluffing, lying, and aggressiveness. Dogs think they can handle these human traits, but they're just dogs. Predictable. Emotional. Easy tells.

This movie is about four childhood friends who are all in danger of dying.

To save themselves, they concoct a scheme to sacrifice one of them for the sake of the others. But they want to keep things anonymous to alleviate guilt, and that's where they stop trusting each other. Like four dogs playing poker, trying to figure out the other dogs' motives, not knowing who to trust...

The details sometimes fall by the wayside in order to set up this very interesting idea, but I found the story itself to be gripping. I had to watch the whole thing to see what happened.

Can you trust YOUR childhood friends if all your lives were on the line?

A stylish thriller, with one major let-down: the whole premise is just so unbelievable that you really need to be able to suspend your disbelief for this one.

Four young art thieves, and their mentor (a surprisingly good, but underused Tim Curry), steal a priceless statue from an Argentinian millionaire, (a surprisingly good, but underused ex-James Bond, George Lazenby!) and ship it back to the States on a cargo ship. Recipient of the said statue hears that it isn't on the ship, and promises to kill all five if it isn't delivered - or make them pay $1 million. So, what would you do? Wait and see if it turns up, do a runner and leave the country? Or build up some elaborate insurance scam whereby one of you has to kill another one, so the rest of the gang can claim $1 million insurance? They opt for the latter, and all reality goes out of the window. It's a shame, because the four 'friends' are good together, and there are some genuine thrilling moments. Its pretensions to film noir are justified an only a few occasions, and the 'twist' ending doesn't really make up for the plotholes.

That said, certainly worth a look.

With such a great title and the premise while a little far-fetched being also brilliant, Four Dogs Playing could have been a very good film. Instead for me it had its fair share of good things but fell short, being a moderately entertaining film at most.

Four Dogs Playing Poker is stylishly made, looking every bit the brooding thriller type of film, complete with atmospheric and not too dim lighting and settings that suit the film well. It's competently directed, the music does have intensity and the story while less than perfect is a lot of time diverting and not too dull. Another thing Four Dogs Playing Poker does well is that it has a fun cast, with the high points being Tim Curry, who's excellent(if very underused) in a more serious role than usual, and an intimidating Forrest Whittaker. Olivia Williams brings a variety of emotions to her role and Balthazar Getty is very charismatic in his.

Sadly, Four Dogs Playing Poker does come up short in other areas. The script is quite weak, being rather underdeveloped and sometimes confused, leaving more questions than answers with some "comedy" parts instead feeling flat and misplaced. Despite the cast giving their all the film does a not particularly good job making their characters interesting, with almost all of them being one-dimensional and clichéd and the most experienced cast members(i.e. Curry) not being in long enough). Four Dogs Playing Poker is hurt by the predictability of the second half, weakening the fun and suspense that the film started off with, which also becomes increasingly preposterous, in want of more explanation and lacking in momentum. By the time the twist came I found myself not caring very much for who the perpetrator was.

Overall, great title and premise but doesn't quite deliver as much as it could have done. Disappointing, but hardly a time-waster. 5/10 Bethany Cox

**SPIOLERS WITHIN**

Four Dogs Playing Poker had a very good premise. Unfortunately, the plot gaps kill the movie. The following are issues I had with the movie:

1. In a game of life or death, they let one person go into the bank to place the life insurance policies in the safe deposit boxes. Ultimately, this leads to the demise of the other characters. Are you kidding me?? Gee, you think she might cheat the other people and save her own life?? Surely not. Lets trust her to go in alone.

2. There is no way they could have collected on life insurance policies that quickly, especially in a situation as suspicious as it would have been.

3. Incriminating messages are left on various answering machines. These people are apparently not too bright.

I will stop at this point, although I could go on forever. The acting was mediocre AT BEST. A couple of scenes were really corny, including the leaping between buildings and the woman falling off the ladder. If you are looking for a movie that is realistic, this is absolutely not it.

5 out of 10.

The idea of this movie is brilliant and it could have led the script towards a totally different perspective of the action. Although some scenes are obviously forced, and higly unlikely, the movie captures you till the end. The dilema, the game to decide the killer and the victim, could have provided much more psychological moments than it actually does, and that would have made the movie better. Unfortunately, after the middle of the film, it becomes a simple action movie with simple and way too predictable events. All in all, a good idea, a nice watch, but it's a pity - it could have been great. Vote: 5 out of 10.