It's really difficult to make an interesting film about someone else gambling. When this blog was suggested to me by a friend, I wondered if I could come up with five gambling movies I could recommend. It was a chore but here goes. At # 5 "A Big Hand for the Little Lady" starts off the list. It's a very witty con-artist film with a heavyweight cast. Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward, Jason Robards, Burgess Meredith are featured in the film. Each year in Laredo, Texas five prominent businessmen and assorted professionals gather for a high stakes poker game. Nothing stops this annual rite. We see a lawyer leaving a case before his final arguments have been made. A wealthy cattleman(Robards)postpones his daughters' wedding to make the game. Henry Fonda's character drifts into town. He's supposedly just "passing through" on his way with a handful of cash to spend on his new homestead. He's accompanied by his wife and son. To tell anymore would be spoiling this nice little caper film. Number 4 is "Rounders", about a law student(Matt Damon)who was taken for everything he had in a poker game, and now works a graveyard shift and hits the books at the behest of his girlfriend(Gretchen Mol). He stumbles onto an office poker game during a early morning delivery attended by his law professors. He astounds them with his ability to discern their "tells". His diligence to staying away from the tables is lost the minute his best friend(Ed Norton) is released from prison. They are soon on a quest to hit every private game in the Tri-State area to build up enough capital to pay off "Worm's"(Norton)gambling debt. Damon and Norton are quite good together, but John Malkovich steals the show as Russian mob boss Teddy "KGB". At # 3 is certainly the funniest gambling movie ever. "Let It Ride" starring a manic Richard Drefuss as Trotter, a small time horse player, is hilarious from beginning to end. After pledging to his wife to quit betting horses, he is given a "tip" that an upcoming race may be "fixed". This leads Dreyfuss and his pal Looney(David Johannsen) to the track to make an easy buck. Trotter soon has one mystical experience after another, and he turns his initial win into tens of thousands, hitting winners on race after race. This movie has a Damon Runyanesque feel to it. The director Joe Pytka perfectly captures the race track milieu and all of the seedy and colorful characters that inhabit the track. Dreyfuss, Johannson, Jennifer Tilly, Allen Garfield all score huge laughs. Teri Garr is very funny as Trotter's wife, who arrives at the jockey club in the middle of his hot streak and proclaims, "I don't understand why you can't just enjoy the horse races without betting on them." It's not a great movie, but it is a great comedy. "The Color of Money" is at # 2. Fast Eddie Felson(Paul Newman) is getting old. He can no longer play pool like he used to. He finds a remarkably talented pool player in Vincent(Tom Cruise in maybe his best performance ever)that, with the help of Vincent's girlfriend, he plans to use to make money "hustling" other players. Martin Scorsese brings his frenetic camera work and quick-fire editing to the proceedings. Newman and Cruise play off each other well, and are supported by good bits from Forrest Whitaker and John Tuturro. The top gambling movie of all time? "The Gambler"(1974). No, not the Kenny Rogers TV movie. This film stars James Caan and is a gritty character study about compulsive gambling. Caan has never been better. He stars as Axel Freed, a NY City college professor of literature with a penchant for playing table games of chance. Sooner than the credits stop rolling he has incurred a debt of 44,000 and change. One character says "That's six El Dorado's". In today's economy maybe one El Dorado. He asks his mother for the money and she relents. She asks what they'd do to him if he couldn't pay. "For ten grand they break your arm, for twenty grand they break your leg." Does Axel go immediately to pay back his 44 grand? No, he bets three Ncaa basketball games at "fifteen dimes" each, and heads to Las Vegas with his girlfriend. He goes on the mother of all wins streaks at the crap tables, roulette wheels, and finally is seen hitting an 18 at the blackjack table. When the dealer turns over a three, he says "that's it, it's over." The film is the one accurate depiction of a gambler who really doesn't feel good until he loses. Written by James Toback and directed by Karel Reisz, it's a lost gem from the golden age of film, and Nixed's Pick as the best gambling movie of all-time.
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