Poker Face

Russel Crowe directed this action thriller drama and it was a decent attempt. However, it falls short of the expectations we have from him as an actor at least. His acting also took a dip perhaps due to directorial burden as he was not at his usual best. Movie started off as a fairly good premise and it started to build on the characters but then the plot got very muddled up with too many things going on simultaneously towards the later half. Revenge plot alone could have developed it into a reasonable movie on its own but the addition of the thugs angle made it neither here nor there. Overall a good one time watch and I rate it as 6/10.

Sorry, Mr. Crowe.. writing & directing do not seem like your forte. Poker Face has so little to do with poker.. or friendship, or betrayals, or anything meaninful for that matter. It's just a blandly written, blandly performed, blandly directed film with no takeaways. For a film branded as an action-crime-thriller, it does no favors to any of the genres. Why was Liam Hemsworth (32) cast as Crowe's (58) childhood friend? Every character is painted in broad strokes, not giving us any particular reasons to care - I simply couldn't buy into Crowe's "virtuous, wealthy guy" character at all (a tad too indulgent?). The action itself is surprisingly ordinary, even when a subplot regarding a heist slowly develops.

The bad: this movie has got an artsy fartsy style to it, that was annoying me from the very start. Why? Because I hate it when a director starts using slowmotion photography flashbacks and supposedly spiritual monologues, that dont make sense whatsoever.

BEWARE: this is definitely NOT a straigthforward pokergame movie. Forget about it. Little to none action. Only a tiny bit of supsense.

SKIP the entire first hour. The (little bit) of suspense that there still is, can only be experienced after an entire first hour, wherein nothing much happens AT ALL, besides Russell Crowe looking deep and mysterious into the distance for ages on end and mumbling to himself about deep thoughts and feelings.

What the heck is this movie about?

Ruined by a director, who just doesnt know how to tell a solid story.

It only lasts 1 hour and 20 minutes. I guess they had to cut out a lot of scenes that dragged this movie down even more.

Bad editing. Cheap photography. Even cheaper and ridiculous dialogues. And the story? Pfff, really, this movie is disjointed from the very start.

Not entirely terrible, but definitely missing supsense, missing spark and punch and most of all missing a coherent storyline with credible characters.

Artsy fartsy flop. Sorry...I tried to like it, because I really dig Russell Crowe as an actor, but this time around he couldnt save this movie from failing...

A disjointed film that one can assume was written by aspiring film graduate mates in a pub. The plot holes are as bad as the consistency. A soap opera drama attempt at a thriller (most of which should have been crossed out, rewritten, and edited out). If it was not for the main actor Russell Crowe and a selection of quality Australian actors, this movie would have been a complete disaster. Made worse by poor research into topics such as professional gambling, self-healing retreats, and fine art. To begin with, the Archibald is for a subject of Science, Arts, Letters and Politics. Why paint a gambler? And some of the things said about certain works was so off the mark , I did a wtf and burst out laughing. There was so many pub-written subplots in this movie that went completely nowhere. This movie would have been so much better if someone tutored the script and simplified to a basic panic room thriller without the mess. Russel Crowe and other actors save this movie with quailty acting otherwise it would have been rated as low as 2/10.

I think this movie is being absolutely torn to shreds where it probably doesn't deserve that much backlash.

Is it amazing? No. But I didn't finish watching it with a sour taste in my mouth. It was alright.

The Australian shots are spectacular in some scenes, I particularly enjoyed the architecture and homes/apartments that were showcased. Russell Crowe's acting was good, I thought he fit the character well enough and the last 30-60 minutes where the action occurred was actually pretty good.

All of the other characters did have problems being understood and became irrelevant. I was excited to see Liam Hemsworth but became really confused why he was cast as a guy in his late 50s? It just didn't make sense at all. Also the first half of the movie is pretty slow and doesn't really go anywhere.

Overall it's okay to watch.