Card Player

Of course it's not Dario's best, but it's not his worst. I give it a 5.5, leaning more on the 6 side.

Anna Mari (Taras Kostyuk) is a policewoman working with an Irish policeman (Liam Cunningham) and a young poker champ (Silvio Muccino) to catch a killer who kills his young female victims if the police loose a game of video poker.

This movie seems like an okay mix of "Silence of the Lambs", "Saw 2", and "CSI".

The music, like in all of Darios films, is great. The look of the dead bodies are also fantastic and spooky.

However, Phoebe Scholfield and Jay Benedict (both first time writers) did a horrible job of the dialogue. In fact, I didn't like most of the writing. It was confusing at times but as long as you don't think too deep into it, you can enjoy this as a neat little screaming-and-crying-girl flick with great special effects and so-so kills. They're so-so because most of them are offscreen and similar, but towards the end they get great and unique.

So you could easily enjoy this if you just want to pass the time, but don't expect another Argento classic.

I was among those who felt that Argento lost his touch after TENEBRAE (1982), and that his output during the last 20 years or so was just a pale shadow of his best work (with the truly lamentable 1998 version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA being the worst of all). While all these films contained some interesting elements, they failed to jell into a satisfying whole; the same, therefore, can be said of his latest offering.

THE CARD PLAYER was originally intended as a sequel to THE STENDHAL SYNDROME (1996), which had starred the director's talented daughter Asia: however, in the interim she had turned her attention to directing small, personal films and at the time of the proposed shooting was staying in the U.S.; so, the lead character's name and background had to be slightly changed to accommodate a new actress – Stefania Rocca. Unfortunately, the days when Argento's unique visual style was alone worth the price of admission are long gone and, despite a few distinct touches here and there (with the best sequence being when Rocca is stalked at night by the killer in her own house), THE CARD PLAYER looks – and feels – distressingly like the typical made-for-TV movie that fills up the tube's schedule in Italy virtually every week (the fact that the film is considerably less gory than his earlier stuff, with the majority of the murders taking place off-screen, or that none of the cast members other than Rocca herself are well-known, let alone overseas, only adds to this impression)! At least, regular collaborators Claudio Simonetti (music score) and Sergio Stivaletti (make-up effects) are on hand to offer their consistently reliable input…

Anyway, the cat-and-mouse thriller plot (once one gets over the silly premise that the Police would accept the challenge of a poker game with the killer, even if the prize is the life of a hostage) is intriguing and compelling enough for the most part – but characterization is alarmingly shoddy (despite its attempt to create a romantic situation between Rocca and Liam Cunningham, the latter sent by the British Embassy in Rome to investigate the murders), while the eventual revelation and subsequent climax involving a speeding train are quite a disappointment (though, from what little I recall of Argento's later work, at least OPERA [1987] and SLEEPLESS [2001] were also given lame endings)!

What can I say about this film? It certainly is not a typical Argento film (and I mean that in a very broad sense - there are some things you expect from an Argento film, like gore, tension and a certain visual style), but is it really bad? Well, it's not a terrible movie but from the man that gave us Suspiria, Deep Red and Tenebrae I expected much more.

First of all it's not giallo but more of a run of the mill detective story. Now, this wouldn't be bad if it was a good detective story, but it's not. The identity of the killer was predictable and some parts of the story did not make any sense. On top of that, the acting was not very good and the music was at best tolerable. And the final scene was just bad and did not make much sense.

The only good things about the movie were some great shots of Rome, and a couple of good, powerful scenes (like the first 2 murders) that reminded me a little of Argento's better films.

It's not a very bad movie, it's just a mediocre one. But since it's an Argento movie I expected much more. I give it 5 out of 10.

After getting almost unanimously negative reviews, I was dreading watching IL CARTAIO. It turns out that the film is not bad at all. No, it's not another SUSPIRIA, but nor is it a PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, thankfully. People keep going on about the absence of Argento's trademark style. Well, I want to know what style that would be? Suspiria's? Phenomena's? The Stendhal Syndrome's? I think you get my point. Argento doesn't have one single style -- he had many, and I think that Il Cartaio's style is different rather than absent. I personally liked the camerawork and the cold look of the film. The use of shadow is really good, and I think this has got to be the only film Argento has done that is obviously set in the winter. It gave everything an eery look.

It's a tightly constructed little thriller with a lot of very tense set-piece scenes. The lack of gore confused me a bit, but everyone seems to forget the impalement of a certain character. That, to me, was pretty gory although admittedly not flamboyant. In many ways it seems a lot like the antithesis of Non Ho Sonno, which was extremely over the top in terms of violence.

I think Tenebre was the last film Argento did that received almost unanimous critical acclaim on its initial release. All of his other triumphs since then have grown on people over the years. I don't think Il Cartaio will be any different.

This movie deserves a bit more credit - it is not the best Argento film but it is certainly better than Phantom of the Opera. I think the main complaint that an Argento fan could have about this film is it is very un-Argento - it feels a bit more like a gory Ruth Rendell. However the plot is quite tight, the poker playing serial killer is a new concept that I quite appreciated, the main actress I thought was excellent, she reminded me a lot of Franka Potente. Definitely give this one a watch, its not the usual Argento style but it is still a good thriller. Do not watch this one if you are not a fan of Agatha Christie/Ruth Rendell/Inspector Morse and are expecting Argento's usual slightly bizarre edge - this is a pretty ordinary "detective trying to catch serial killer" flick.