Played

This is definitely scraping the barrel. The filming is more than substandard. Don't get me wrong, I am not into real pretty Hollywood cinematography and special effects for the sake of a good storyline. However the storyline is awfully weak and seems like so many of the films that were to come after "Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels". Just this one fails and fails miserably. The inclusion of some relatively well known actors must have been a coup for the Director and the film investors, as I am sure that most people would have been suckered into thinking that it must have some credibility. In the words of Dillon (Val Kilmer): Someone should have "Taco'd" this movie before release.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from this movie, especially since reviews have stated that much of the script was improvised. The film seemed fairly tightly-scripted to me...perhaps this is a tribute to the cast or director.

I also expected to be put-off by the limited screen time of the major names in the movie. To the contrary, I found it refreshing to have good actors in such small, but crucial, roles. This is the only way to avoid making movies into star vehicles that sacrifice story and direction for the sake of glorifying one or more of the lead characters.

On the other hand, the plot left a bit to be desired. There are quite a few loose ends that never get tied up, including the massive loose end right before the final credits roll. There's a difference between being ambiguous and simply stopping the story in the middle of an arc. This is your basic 2.5-act movie.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie and the characters. There's virtually no character development, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This is worth watching if you enjoy "small" stories about tragedy and get a kick out of a bunch of well-know actors suppressing their desire to be the center of attention.

If you like 87 minutes of British actors dropping f-bombs over and over this is the film for you. Otherwise it's a pretty boring, pointless crime drama.

"Played" was a decent crime thriller despite it's budget shortcomings.

The plot: Ray (Rossi) is a small-time thief who is framed for a crime he didn't commit. When he gets out of jail, he falls back into the same life.

The budget for this movie was $338,000, so I understand why it was shot on video instead of film. I was worried about that because the usual Lionsgate (shot on video) output is usually terrible ("Green River killer", "Heebie Jeebies"). It actually looks good in most scenes.

Mick Rossi does a fine job as Ray. But the big name stars are only in this for maybe five minutes each. Kilmer does his usual professional work. His dialogue was improvised and it shows. ("You're not gonna Taco, Ray.") Jones plays a good bad guy. Byrne appears stiff and looks like he wants to be anywhere else. I also noticed that almost all the actors are on the phone. It's pretty cheap just to shoot actors talking on a phone.

Overall, "Played" was a satisfactory crime flick, that's a good second or third choice at the video store.

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Beware,this is a real pretender.You see Vinnie Jones and Gabriel Byrne on the poster and you see Val Kilmer is in it too,so it looks all good but then the film starts,shows the actors in alphabetic order and at the end it says:Introducing Mick Rossi.So that's what you get to see,about 88 minutes with Mick Rossi and about 1 minute Gabriel Byrnes and about 2 minutes Val Kilmer,only one who's featured a bit more is Vinnie Jones.So if you want to see a true Mick Rossi film (probably the only one he ever will have a leading part in),check it out,otherwise beware.The story is average too.Mick plays a small time gangster who got a job from the big boys which gets him into lots of trouble.