Four Dogs Playing Poker

I gave this one a shot, lured by the text on the cover that this flick would be like mix of the two very good above mentioned films. Not at all in my opinion. I think the plot is very cheaply worked out. The '4 dogs' could have found their way out of the situation more easily than making up this stupid idea about life insurances. I found the acting very poorly too, except maybe for Tim Curry.

All in all not worth the time or money.

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.

**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.

Previous comments seem to be either one of extreme hate or pleasure. I find the extremes fascinating. I think this movie was average. Not great, but worthwhile watching. One that you need to watch twice to get the point. I found no part of it boring. The use of poker in the title has to do with the bluffing, faking, lying and not showing all of ones cards.

On the whole it is much better in terms of the story than most action films.

If plots making sense was a requirement for a good movie, then I guess there are very very few movies worth watching. The plot for example of Master and Commander, a movie I really enjoyed, was based on an absurd disregard for the navel power situation in 1805 wherein Britian had obtained complete mastery over the oceans (e.g., Battle of the Nile, 1803). So why should we attack Four Dogs for a gimmicky premise. Name a movie that doesn't involve some gimmick or suspension of disbelief to get the ball rolling.

To me the only unexplained part is why the bad guy wants a million from them, but that might also be part of the double crossing.

In Four Dogs, the fact that so called friends agree so easily to kill one another was one of the points -- their friendship wasn't worth a half million. It must also be kept in mind that they were being manipulating into agreeing with the idea and it was done so subtly that it is not until you see the movie for the second time that you can see the manipulations that are going one. There's actually a lot of subtly in the movie. But also notice how several members of the group were all prepared to double cross the rest. The main double crosser however did give at least one of them a chance.

It is very doubtful that the insurance scam idea would work, but the main characters didn't clue into the main problem with it -- back dating the payments on the policies -- thats a whole lotta fraud. But its a mute point, there is never any mention at the end of the film about cashing the policies in! Suggesting that the whole insurance scam was part of the doublecrossing plots and a bluff. It isn't important how fast the money will be paid out, whats important is that they players in this high stakes game, think that cashing in the policy on one of them, will save the rest.

The fact that the ships crew had a Mexican accent (I'm assuming that the Argentinian commentator meant accent, not language, cause the language is the same), isn't that surprising since the ship has an English name and is headed toward Los Angeles (home of a very large Mexican population) -- so its more likely to have a Mexican speaking crew than an Argentinian crew.

The whys or practicalities of the movies aren't really the main issues. The most interesting part of the movie is the crisis, the cut throat solution they come up with, how they are manipulated into the solution, and how the solution unravels (as planned).

There a very interesting thing going on when one of the characters asks another if he could really kill her.

You gotta like the "4 Dogs Playing Poker" title but you won't find any of those "dogs sitting around a poker table" pictures in this film. Instead the four dogs are four twenty-something characters recruited by Tim Curry to steal a priceless statuette for a crooked art dealer (Forest Whitaker). Things go wrong and they spend the majority of the movie trying to extricate themselves from their predicament.

They finally settle on a plan to take out back dated life insurance policies and randomly kill one of themselves, using the insurance money to square their account with Whitaker. If all this sounds a bit contrived to you, it might be wise to avoid this film as it requires considerable suspension of logic during the viewing, and even more later when you reflect back on the unexpected twists taken by the story.

The worst part of the whole experience is that aside from the massive plot holes the film is pretty entertaining; making it a frustrating experience since just a little bit of inventiveness by the writer could have successfully closed those holes.

The film wastes little time getting going as the carefully planned theft is already in progress as the titles roll. The team displays just the right mix of amateurism and luck to build some nice suspense and their consignment of the statuette to the purser of a freighter provides some nice ambiguity and foreshadowing.

Things slow down for the remainder of the film and the logic of subsequent events is a bit dodgy. You are unlikely to guess the ending because the director provides insufficient clues. Had there been sufficient information revealed in a form disguised by clever misdirection, "4 Dogs Playing Poker" would have been a real treat.

The most effective tool that the writer/director of suspense films has is the power to show only what they want the viewer to see. This combines with the ability to draw the eye to certain things in the frame and to distract the viewer from more important clues. Manipulating the viewer up to a point but then allowing them free rein to invest each development with their own interpretation (insert "Sixth Sense" and "Kansas City" here). Unfortunately "4 Dogs Playing Poker" simply withholds any important clues. Viewer hindsight does not reveal any reason to feel guilty about not guessing the outcome nor to feel thrilled at being cleverly fooled.

"4 Dogs" has good physical casting with decent performances from the entire ensemble, Curry is excellent and Olivia Williams shows considerable range as there is mega distance between her character here and her extraordinary performance in "Rushmore". Balthazar Getty's close resemblance to Charlie Sheen is distracting but not really a problem.

But to be very good, a small movie like "4 Dogs" must give the viewer complex and realistic characters, particularly when the last half of the movie is more character study than action adventure or psychological thriller. Unfortunately that does not happen and all we end up with are one-dimensional stereotypes that we have no reason to care about. Apparently in their desire to reveal no clues about the resolution, the writer and director excluded anything that might have passed for characterization.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.