RATED R
Mike McDermott... Matt Damon
Worm... Edward Norton
Teddy KGB... John Malkovich
Jo... Gretchen Mol
Joey Knish... John Turturro
Petrovsky... Martin Landau
PLOT: After Mike, a gifted gambler, blows his savings and law school tuition on one hand of poker to KGB, he vows to stop gambling. He focuses on law school and goes to work for his poker mentor Knish, as a delivery driver. Life for Mike and his girlfriend, Jo, is good. That is until the day his boyhood chum Worm gets out of prison. It turns out Worm owes a lot of money to the wrong kind of people. Nice guy that he is, Mike decides to help Worm raise the cash even though it could cost him everything.
GOOD STUFF: While McDermott is no Will Hunting, Damon gives a good performance. He made the character easy to root for, although at times he seems too nice to lead the life he does. Norton and Malkovich were even better as the carefree cheat and peculiar Russian respectively. The gambling scenes were fun to watch. I also liked the fact that a lot of inside poker lingo was used. Sometimes it may cause you to think about what they're saying but it helps to make the movie more realistic.
BAD STUFF: The biggest problem with Rounders was the ending. Without saying too much, the ending was too happy but it really wasn't that big of a problem. While I don't, some might say that this film is too pro-gambling. Norton and Turturro were under used. Worm was the best part about this movie and his absence from scenes is definitely noticed. Mol was not very impressive and her character Jo did not add much to the movie.
CONCLUSION: Rounders is a well writen and mostly well acted film. It does well to show what the life of a gambler is like, the pros and the cons. Everyone not recovering from a gambling addiction should see this movie.
Image from Miramax