Gutshot Straight

I like George Eads. He was entertaining as MacGyver's partner in the reboot. His connection to CSI has given him a lot of experience, so naturally a film set in Las Vegas seems a natural for him.

So why is this movie not rated higher? No explosions. No car chases. No blazing gun battles. Nope. None of that stuff. Just Jack. He wanders from point A to point B, getting along. Sometimes his crappy Volvo starts. He plays cards. He has a few friends. He needs a shave. Sometimes he gets punched in the face. He can take it. He's looking for money. Duffy gets to him. And then life happens.

Supporting characters are pretty strong. Vinnie Jones and Steven Seagal are underworld types that Jack orbits. Steven Lang (the colonel in Avatar) and Ted Levine (Jame Gumb in Silence of the Lambs) are psychopath brothers who unfortunately don't share screen time. Tia Carrera (schwing!) is forgettable as a barfly.

This could have been a more powerful movie if it were a little tighter on the direction. Other than that, it was fun to watch.

Review: After looking at the poster for this film, I thought that it would be half decent but none of the big actors are actually in the film that much. The film is about a professional gambler called Jack Daniel, played by George Eads, whose approached by a man in a casino with a proposition that is hard to pass up. With all of his debts piling up, Jack calls the guy and ends up spending the whole night with him, in a strip bar and then he goes back to his house and finds out that all is not what it seems. After a bad accident, he ends up in deep trouble so he turns to Seagal for help, who he owes money to. This is one of those cheap movies which has a terrible storyline. The director had loads of chances to make it interesting but the whole concept was just too unrealistic. The acting wasn't that great and it seemed to go round and round in circles. On the plus side, it's quite short so it gets right on with it from the beginning but it goes nowhere fast and I got fed up with it after a while. Disappointing!

Round-Up: After watching a couple of Seagal movies lately, I thought that I would give his films a chance but they all seem cheap and badly put together. It seems like Seagal, Vinnie Jones, Danny Trejo, Ving Rhymes Christian Slater, Cuba Gooding Jr etc, all use the same agent because they all make the same type of, straight to DVD, low budget movies that are quite bad. There must be an audience that actually enjoy these films because they do produce a lot of them but I personally only watch them for a laugh because they are so awful. Anyway, I thought that this was going to be about gambling, with loads of violence but it was just about a man who has to get himself out of a tricky situation. Seagals scenes weren't bad but I won't be watching it again in a hurry.

I recommend this movie to people who are into their thrillers about a gambler who ends up in a impossible situation after sleeping with a sketchy man's wife. 3/10

There was little content with Seagal on it. The guy from Prison Break and CSI is worse than in those two series. Boring. Ordinary gambling, action, problems. Nothing to see. Not convincing, negative, immoral, disconnected events. Unrealistic how naive characters behave and no tactics, logic, strategy. Just some random sudden naive things happening. Nothing to look forward for. Empty end. No emotions. The main character but also everybody looks tired, disinterested, and evil.

I didn't plan on writing a review about this movie, cause there simply isn't that much to say about it and I didn't have a strong liking or disliking for it, it was just a okay but flawed watch

I'd like to point out that even though Steven Segal and Vinnie Jones despite getting top-billing and on the poster are not in it for that many scenes (3 to be exact).

Now I don't even like them so personally I don't care but I know they have a strong following so I thought I'd give the heads up to their fans who might be eager to watch them.

It's also not a action-movie as the poster is made to look like, it's more of a slow burning film noir type movie, not a very successful one but that is the genre I think they are heading for.

It's not all negative though George Eads from CSI is a pretty cool guy in the lead and I wouldn't mind seeing him lead other movies in the future.

The plot is decent when it's not all over the place, I could have done without 1 or 2 twists though, which felt terribly forced, like they often do in movies like these.

AnnaLynne McCord whom I loved in Excision and enjoyed in Scorned (despite that movie being very flawed her performance was very entertaining) is just okay here, feels like she's not really trying too hard.

Tia Carrere appears in one pretty pointless scene.

What more can I say? Oh yeah one thing that got a little annoying was when they had tons of flashbacks of scenes from like 10 minutes prior in black and white, highly pointless.

I watched 'Gutshot Straight' solely because of my interest in poker, I appreciate a good gambling movie and that seemed to be what a title like that spells out. I didn't expect much from it which I think benefited my viewing unlike others who thought it was going to be an action trip. It's very much a low level attempt at film noir with merely average results.

A down and out poker player in Vegas, Jake (George Eads) gets offered an opportunity to make big money from a wealthy gambler (Stephen Lang). Which soon involves his beautiful wife (AnnaLynne McCord) and it's both readily apparent to the viewer and Jake alike that he's caught in the middle of two people and schemes that could get him killed if he doesn't navigate it correct. Complicating matters is Lewis (Ted Levine) - the wealthy gamblers unhinged brother - who shows up looking for answers and Jake's debt to a local loan shark (Steven Seagal).

Here's some notes in case you watched the stylish trailer already ... this isn't an action film. Secondly it's not a legit Steven Seagal movie like some people are talking it up to be. Most of the big faces make brief appearances that were properly shot quickly over a day or two max and the film is trying it's hardest to mask it's low budget. Vinnie Jones plays Seagal's right hand man & muscle and oddly Tia Carrera shows up for one scene only at a casino bar.

George Eads (who most people will know from CSI) spends a lot of the movie slinking around in a fedora. The filmmakers don't flash a big obvious sign to tell you he's dumb, but the fact that he loves to chase gutshot straights playing poker, drives a crappy car and is in hock to at least one loan shark says enough. Easy money is never really easy is it?

Eads is likeable however as the main character and McCord is easy on the eyes even if she isn't able to completely nail the deceptive femme fatale. All and all, 'Gutshot Straight' was a harmless view. It didn't deliver the gambling movie fix I was hoping for and it doesn't have the right credentials to pull off the noir angle it was intending to accomplish though.