Elaborate schemes and gambling ways are a certainty with feature films. Ocean’s Eleven, 21, Hard Eight, these are just a few examples of what Poker Face is not. Casinos and cards as the backdrop to tough violence and the intricate, at-odds protagonist and antagonist relationships are no longer a surprise. For director and star Russell Crowe to paint that as newly founded in any way is a harsh reality his second spell behind the camera fails to confront. Instead, he opts for a riff on Molly’s Game, wondering what would have happened if Mr. X had lots of friends and lots of hatchets to bury with them for betraying him in several strange and mannerless ways. Poker Face is not sure of itself either but does well to cement the natural friendship lit between people diving off of rocks.
Yet it goes beyond throwing the self into bodies of water, Poker Face adapts to the game of poker, which type is unknowable for those that did not play cards on pallets next to rivers in their youth. Still, that appears to have levelled the implications that come with dares, grief and money. It does not take too long for Poker Face, which has no relation to the Lady Gaga song, to go off of the rails. Crowe may want to hold it like they do in Texas but has no way of motivating his lead performance or the characters within. He appears to use this time to show anguish, sweat and guitar-playing skills in a tent somewhere in that far-off, distant land. It looks as though he has journeyed deep into the heart of darkness to hone his poker-playing skills, the Batman Begins of five-card stud.
Yet it is all built up to the inevitable range of fallouts yet to come, a man who wants to get his own back on friends that betrayed or abandoned him. None of that matters anyway when it takes a tumble into the generics of the action genre. Crowe positions himself as the hero, a far stretch away from the interesting, villainous motivations of Unhinged. Where that former piece had simplicity and motivation in the case of road rage, Poker Face is a devoid and unreasonable feature that doesn’t quite understand the implications of a home-based heist. It fumbles and feels closer to a horribly numb action flick than anything else, a terrible shame when there was so much presence earlier in the film that based itself on the rewards and resolutions of friendship.
A trio of robbers infiltrate the home, a Mel Gibson-lookalike brandishes a shotgun while he is joined by a vaguely comical double act who do not appear to necessarily be funny. These altercations are relatively numb and unexpected, RZA and company thrown into padded rooms where they must keep themselves quiet. Poker Face is more about unity through trauma than it is anything else, but it never feels as though Crowe and company are all that engaged or competent at relaying its message. Instead, Sky have themselves a horribly dull feature that, for its final half hour, is reserved for using one room of a fancy home, presumably the budget had dried up on Crowe’s trip to learn poker.
