Ed note: The World Series of Poker final table coverage begins this week on ESPN. Yeah, we know who won, but we're still excited about watching all the action. For the next week we'll revisit our reviews of poker in cinema. Or in this case, direct-to-video crap.
(2006, 89 min) A horrible quickie aimed at cashing in on the poker craze, taking all the worst elements of Rounders to create an interminable 90 minutes of pokerbabble. Three young women, fresh out of college, come up with a poker cheating scheme that's about 40 years old and would never work. It does work for a while, but when they're caught, two of the girls are held hostage by a crazy Johnny Chan lookalike, and the poker neophyte must prove her worth (without cheating) to set everything right. WhatEVER!
These actresses make Pia Zadora look Oscar-worthy, and it doesn't help that they're alternately spouting the most basic cliches and the most banal (and cryptic) poker idioms. One of them even has to go over the rules of Texas Hold 'em for the audience — can you imagine Field of Dreams beginning with an overview of the rules of baseball? By the way, don't be fooled by the "unrated" tag on the cover; the production was too cheap to go to the MPAA for a rating, and the one brief topless scene (strip poker, natch) is incredibly tame.
© TLA Entertainment Group
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