9.11.98 00:11:16
`Rounders' is flush with good characters, fine acting

Rounders
**** (out of five)
Starring Matt Damon, Edward Norton, John Turturro, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, John Malkovich, Martin Landau. A Miramax Films release written by Joel Stillerman and Ted Demme, directed by John Dahl. Rated R, contains violence, profanity. Running time: 120 minutes.

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

Matt Damon plays a high-stakes poker player who's trying to quit the game and make it in law school, at least until his old pal gets out of prison and sucks him back into it in the grippingly entertaining, if farfetched, Rounders.

Director John Dahl, who charmed critics and independent-film audiences with his back-to-back successes of Red Rock West and The Last Seduction before going mainstream with the forgettable Unforgettable, plays a winning hand in a deck that's loaded with fascinating characters and unexpected complications.

Rounders, whose title refers to the card sharks who circle the gaming tables looking to pick off the amateurs, has the darkly sinister look of Dahl's earlier work. He has been called "the master of modern noir'' for a reason and has set much of Rounders in the nighttime world of clubs and brothels and members-only basement card parlors. Dahl isn't afraid to stick our noses into the violence and seediness of this world.

If there's a flaw in his film, it's that Damon -- Private Ryan himself -- lacks the hardened, grizzled look worn by the people he plays against, a look made up of long, stressful hours sitting around a smoky table playing poker. That Damon's Mike McDermott is also trying to balance his late-night games with a full-time law school load is more outrageous. Damon looks like a choir boy. Although Mike can talk like a frazzled truckdriver, Damon's too polished and smooth for the seediness of it.

On the other hand, Damon's clean-cut appearance, improbable as it may be, works to not only pull people into the film (think Tom Cruise in The Color of Money), but to make us believe -- or want to believe -- that maybe he's just clever enough to pull off Mike's poker scams. His is the unlikeliest poker face you can imagine. But while Mike looks angelic, his eyes are only on the poker chip pot, which is where his heart truly lies. Mike believes that "it's immoral to let a sucker keep his money.'' His unrepentant motto is, "If you can't spot a sucker in the first half-hour at the table, you are the sucker.''

At the start of the film, Mike plays a big game -- he thinks it's the game of his life -- versus a high-stakes club owner, a Russian nicknamed KGB (John Malkovich in a Volga accent so broad it's almost comical) who is as addicted to pulling the top half off Oreo cookies and then devouring them (a mannered, if memorable, touch) as Mike is to poker.

The Worm turns up

After this game, Mike vows to lay off poker, instead concentrating on law school and on his pretty, sweetly sacrificing girlfriend, Jo (Gretchen Mol), who has been losing patience with Mike's addiction.

But that's before his lifelong childhood pal and former poker-playing partner Worm (Edward Norton) gets out of prison and comes back into Mike's life.

Worm (and the nickname is perfect for the insidious way Norton plays this slippery character, worming his way into Mike's life) is intent on paying off a $25,000-or-else debt left over from before he went to prison. Worm, who has a talent for dealing from the bottom of the deck, is certain he can make the money back fast, but soon he's ringing up big debts using Mike's good name as collateral.

It's not long before both men are in an unholy alliance, sliding deeper and deeper into what seems to be a bottomless pit as they try to win back enough money to pay off the debt while the clock ticks down. It's exciting, especially in the heart-thudding games that Dahl presents as life-or-death situations.

I'm no poker player : I could better figure out some of the Cyrillic alphabet characters on the Russian signs in a sauna scene than I could fathom what certain combinations of cards meant. No matter. You know soon enough who has won what, just the way Mike's talents lie in "reading'' the faces of his opponents around a poker table.

A funny sequence takes place in Atlantic City where Mike -- who doesn't believe in luck, but in skill -- gives an amusing analysis of the various fish who sit down innocently at a gaming table where they are about to be devoured by the sharks.

But mostly the film is earnest, on-the-run adventures, tempered by the question of how long it will be before Mike gets tired of the troubles Worm keeps bringing into his life. At one point Worm delivers Mike into a game where most of the players are New York State troopers . . . then proceeds to cheat.

Real characters

A wise guy with a smart mouth and a cocky attitude, Worm creates most of his own problems. He can't let go. Can't get enough. Always looking for the next score. Always figuring that his luck will change, when Mike keeps pointing out that there is no such thing as luck.

Norton creates a character who might as well have a thundercloud over his head for all the trouble he rains down on himself and his buddy, though he gives Worm enough bravado and spirit of adventure to make one think at first that he knows what he's doing.

Still, the longer Worm's shenanigans go on, the more exasperatingly foolish Mike seems for going along with his sleazy friend, even though the script by Joel Sitllerman and Ted Demme give him background reasons for his devotion. The script is good at getting under the skins of its characters and fleshing them out.

Other roles are strongly cast, too. John Turturro is Mike's sad-sack guardian angel who turns up at crisis moments to try to set him straight; Mol is sympathetic as Mike's distressed sweetheart; Famke Janssen is generous as an understanding, high-stakes game operator who still has a crush on Mike; Oscar-winner Martin Landau brings wisdom to a tired old law school dean who, in a beautifully played scene, gives Mike a peek into the role that destiny plays in our lives.

Aces are very high here.

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