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.

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?

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.

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.

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.