All In The Movie

[Red_Bull]

I was in the video store tonight browsing through some movie to hire and alleviate my boredom and happened across a title called 'All In'. Ok, a movie about poker, I'll add it to the bunch and see what it's like. I hadn't heard of this movie despite my addiction to everything poker related. Direct to DVD then, so that's not a great start. Still, couldn't be worse than, oh I dunno, Basic Instinct 2 could it? Oh yes...

This movie was totally, absolutely, mindnumbingly terrible. I can't possibly find the words to describe the awesome crappiness of this feature. Then the opening sequence finished and the abomination that followed lent itself to the development of a whole new set of parameters that could be applied to the word 'train crash'. The plot was completely idiotic, and I've seen better acting from cardboard boxes than the cast for this one.

Anyway, lets get to the flop. See what I did there? *ahem*...Ace (yes, thats her name) is introduced into the story as she watches her father play poker with his mates as we've all done. Nothing wrong with that. Not according to the bible bashing, religious nutjob of a mother/wife who disapproves (we know this because she starts quoting from the bible and crapping on about God), and then leaves him.

Cut to present day and it's Ace's first day at medical school and she's overjoyed to be there. Hello sky, hello trees. Life's obviously wonderful. She meets her friends (I forget their names...not that it matters) and they end up playing strip poker. How come when I go about playing strip poker there's five guys and only one girl? In this, there's three guys and three girls so there's something for everyone. It's probably a good thing the movie left this particular subplot undeveloped because we're moving on. There's a lot to cram in still, such as the comically evil medical doctor blackmailing the illegal immigrant patients, and a father who apparently commits suicide after taking a bad beat from some mob guy (this comes after he spends a patronising few minutes giving us a few morals on life, as well as tricks to the game). Actually, I want to take a moment to dissect the 'Yer either in, or yer out' quote that was painfully repeated through-out the duration. I think it was supposed to reflect the major life changing decisions that certain characters were forced to make. Like everything else in the movie, any themes that were meant to be portrayed were half assed and underdone.

Wait, lets backtrack. A medical drama in a poker movie? Oh yes, just when you thought it couldn't get much more ridiculous, it's Scrubs meets WSOP. Ace confronts a doctor over the scandal she and the evil head doctor are running. A few scenes later, Ace confronts a doctor over the scandal she and the evil head doctor are running. Hang on, didn't we already do a similar scene? Yes, but we're doing it again in case our slow witted audience missed it the first time. Actually, it doesnt matter because that particular subplot sort of just...fades out....

...BECAUSE ITS THE ALL-IN POKER TOURNAMENT HELD AT THE CASINO!!!!! ZOMG! There's even a herd of moose munching on the grass out the front. Ace and her mates decide to enter this after realising they were strapped for cash and based upon one night of strip poker they decide 'hey, Ace won a hand, she must be good, we'll bankroll her'. The zesty, in your face team comprises of someone who has a brilliant memory, someone who knows all the tells ('this guy is bluffing when he takes 8 seconds to make a decision, but not when he takes 4 seconds...yeah, whatever'), a psychologist, and I dont know what the other guy did. He was just there to tell Ace that she's the best and she should get back in there whenever she ran out. Which was frequently. Seriously, she is a terrible poker player.

So anyway we find ourselves at the final table and there the plot erm...thickens. Not only is the evil medical doctor there, but also some guy who looks - wait, it IS Ace's father. Apparently he didn't actually die, he just faked his own death to avoid paying his debts. Hey, I warned you this movie was bad. I described the Doctor's tell earlier; 8 seconds to bluff and 4 seconds when he has the nuts. But what if he takes 6 seconds? Oh the drama, the tension, the...nah, who am I kidding, Ace smashes him. The finale is equally stupid and finally it runs out of steam and with nothing better to show, the director brings this shoddy, badly written, poorly directed cinematic bomb to a close.

The Good
-Eric Seidel and John Yuang make cameo appearances.

The Bad
-The 98 minute running time. Seriously 5 minutes would've been too long.
-I was lying about the moose.