Fluentiama
Perfect cast and a good story
Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Ogosmith
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
leonblackwood
Review: After looking at the poster for this film, I thought that it would be half decent but none of the big actors are actually in the film that much. The film is about a professional gambler called Jack Daniel, played by George Eads, whose approached by a man in a casino with a proposition that is hard to pass up. With all of his debts piling up, Jack calls the guy and ends up spending the whole night with him, in a strip bar and then he goes back to his house and finds out that all is not what it seems. After a bad accident, he ends up in deep trouble so he turns to Seagal for help, who he owes money to. This is one of those cheap movies which has a terrible storyline. The director had loads of chances to make it interesting but the whole concept was just too unrealistic. The acting wasn't that great and it seemed to go round and round in circles. On the plus side, it's quite short so it gets right on with it from the beginning but it goes nowhere fast and I got fed up with it after a while. Disappointing!Round-Up: After watching a couple of Seagal movies lately, I thought that I would give his films a chance but they all seem cheap and badly put together. It seems like Seagal, Vinnie Jones, Danny Trejo, Ving Rhymes Christian Slater, Cuba Gooding Jr etc, all use the same agent because they all make the same type of, straight to DVD, low budget movies that are quite bad. There must be an audience that actually enjoy these films because they do produce a lot of them but I personally only watch them for a laugh because they are so awful. Anyway, I thought that this was going to be about gambling, with loads of violence but it was just about a man who has to get himself out of a tricky situation. Seagals scenes weren't bad but I won't be watching it again in a hurry.I recommend this movie to people who are into their thrillers about a gambler who ends up in a impossible situation after sleeping with a sketchy man's wife. 3/10
Larry Silverstein
This nonsensical and bizarre noir initially offers some intrigue as to where exactly this dark tale is going. However, to me, it just seemed to get more and more convoluted and ridiculous as it progressed.Set in Las Vegas, George Eads gives a solid performance here as Jack, a wise-cracking poker playing chump, who always seems to be dodging or getting beaten up by his creditors. One night, he's approached in the casino by a wealthy smarmy gambler, named Duffy (Stephen Lang), who offers Jack a chance to make some big bucks, but won't reveal to him the details.When Jack gets desperate enough for cash, he takes Duffy up on his offer and goes to his mansion. Jack soon finds out the deal is for him to have sex with Duffy's sultry wife May (AnnaLynne McCord), while Duffy observes and Jack will receive $20,000.Of course, you know that things are not going to go smoothly and Jack will get himself deeper and deeper in a web of deceit and death. When Duffy's brother Lewis arrives on the scene, even more mayhem and murder will follow.As so often happens in these types of films, Steven Seagal's name will be used for advertising but his screen time is limited in a supporting role. Why Tia Carrere agreed to play a ridiculous cameo role of a strip club drinks hustler is beyond me.All in all, I found Eads performance here good, but after an initial interest into where this was going, I just found this noir to eventually turn into just a muddled mess of a movie.
Seth_Rogue_One
I didn't plan on writing a review about this movie, cause there simply isn't that much to say about it and I didn't have a strong liking or disliking for it, it was just a okay but flawed watchI'd like to point out that even though Steven Segal and Vinnie Jones despite getting top-billing and on the poster are not in it for that many scenes (3 to be exact).Now I don't even like them so personally I don't care but I know they have a strong following so I thought I'd give the heads up to their fans who might be eager to watch them.It's also not a action-movie as the poster is made to look like, it's more of a slow burning film noir type movie, not a very successful one but that is the genre I think they are heading for.It's not all negative though George Eads from CSI is a pretty cool guy in the lead and I wouldn't mind seeing him lead other movies in the future.The plot is decent when it's not all over the place, I could have done without 1 or 2 twists though, which felt terribly forced, like they often do in movies like these.AnnaLynne McCord whom I loved in Excision and enjoyed in Scorned (despite that movie being very flawed her performance was very entertaining) is just okay here, feels like she's not really trying too hard.Tia Carrere appears in one pretty pointless scene.What more can I say? Oh yeah one thing that got a little annoying was when they had tons of flashbacks of scenes from like 10 minutes prior in black and white, highly pointless.
Tony Heck
"If you want to live, if you want those you care about to live, you will do this." Jack (Eads) is a poker player who is on a losing streak, and not just with the cards. When a chance meeting with a high roller gives Jack the opportunity to make some serious money he decides to take him up on his offer. When he is offered $20,000 to do something he doesn't want to do an argument happens and things go horribly wrong. Now that his life is in danger he is offered a way out. Jack must now decide what is more important to him. After watching so many of these cheesy action movies I was expecting yet another drawn out movie that could have been done in 20 min but drug out for 90. I have to say much like the recent movie Throwdown I was really surprised at how much I liked this. The movie is really nothing new but for some reason it drew me and I kept me interested the entire time. Overall, nothing amazing but this was very entertaining and I liked it much more than I expected. I surprisingly give this a B-.