Played - Se non giochi muori

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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Mick Rossi gets out of prison after eight years. He's taken the fall, hasn't talked about his accomplices to get a better deal. His reward is a hit job in Los Angeles. But he will discover that there are no rules, no loyalties, and no honor among thieves. And the cops are just as dirty.

This is a dirty, gritty, poorly realized movie, but one thing it does have is the realization, after eighty years of making movies about criminals, is that they don't do it out of a sense of anything but what they get out of it. There are n loyalties carried over from childhood, no Runyonesque malapropisms, just raw viciousness as portrayed by some fine performers like Val Kilmer, Gabriel Byrnes, Vinnie Jones, Anthony Lapaglia, Bruno Kirby, and Roy Dotrice.

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.

As others have said, do not be mislead by the name cast. nearly all the major name actors have very little screen time.

It is the first major role for Mick Rossi (he also did the screenplay)

This film had a small budget & it shows.

The production values are nil.

The acting is only so-so.

The script is chock full of the F word & variations of same plus other choice vulgarisms.

I cant say I hated this film, Its just not good just mediocre.

Ratings ** (out of 4) 52 points (out of 100) IMDb 4 (out of 10_