Metacritic reviews

One of the things I like best about Poolhall Junkies is its lack of grim desperation.

Brassy and energetic, first-time director Mars Callahan's vividly photographed ode to the seductive allure of professional sharking succeeds in making the game seem genuinely kinetic and thrilling.

Callahan mostly overcomes its grungy technical quality with entertaining dialogue, nervy confrontation scenes, decent thesping and some truly spectacular shooting on the green velvet.

For all his skill with a cue, the charisma-challenged Callahan is no Nia Vardalos in the acting department -- let alone a Paul Newman or Tom Cruise.

It isn't that nothing happens in Poolhall Junkies, it's that nothing interesting does.

The result is by no means the embarrassment that many such offerings from unjustifiably vain actor-auteurs have been, but nor does it present much of anything new or compelling to demand one's attention.

Stole so many details from the earlier film, "The Hustler," that you have to think of it as either a bad parody or an unfortunate homage.

Callahan's feature debut is a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

Looks like a cheap polyester suit, an entirely synthetic composite of scenes from other movies.

A movie that, in its unconditional embrace of an all-male subculture, amounts to little more than a rote circle jerk.