Poker Face
A yearly high-stakes poker game between childhood friends turns into chaos when the tech billionaire host unveils an elaborate scheme to seek revenge for the ways they've betrayed him over the years. But as his plans unfold, a group of thieves hatch plans of their own breaking into the mansion thinking it is empty. The old friends quickly band together and the years of playing the game help them win their way through a night of terror.
- Released: 2022-11-16
- Runtime: 95 minutes
- Genre: Drama, Thrillers
- Stars: Russell Crowe, Liam Hemsworth, RZA, Brooke Satchwell, Aden Young, Steve Bastoni, Daniel MacPherson, Elsa Pataky, Jack Thompson, Jacqueline McKenzie, Lynn Gilmartin, Matt Nable, Benedict Hardie, Paul Tassone, Molly Grace, Addam Bramich, Jemima Quinn, Oscar Mitchell, Zara Zoe, Lucy Lock
- Director: Russell Crowe
Comments
- borhank - 10 April 2024
Who Won The Poker Game?
The wife and i watched this in 2 parts as parenting is something we have to continue to do with two little ones.
Poker Face is i feel a good movie that just never gets off the ground.
It has a slow burn mentality as if Russel Crowe was building up to a crensendo however you keep waiting for this peak to hit and when it does you are not holding on tight and wanting to know what occurs its just a feeling of when are we going to get to the end.
The only aspect of the movie i enjoyed was the whos who in the awesome cast that were performing in the movie from Daniel Mcpherson to RZA to Liam Hemsworth and Chris Hemsworths wife did you know she was Elina in the Fast and Furious franchise.
It was a family affair to that level.
The cast was great and you could tell that for Russel this was a great execuse to get old mates around to make a movie and the movie although not the greatest it was good enough to watch once and smile on the screen as much as you could for a Action thriller.
Not suitable for kids lots of swearing and that was highly used in the movie but it did have a family element to it. - andreabosboom - 24 July 2023
Crowe should have had a childhood friend to keep him from making this movie
Poor script, many inconsistencies. Lazy and full of Clichés. Mediocre acting at best. If you like to listen to Russel Crowe's voice then you are in luck, many voice overs used to explain backstories and whisper deep meaningful messages that were apparently too m challenging to convey in script or acting.
The movie is like a testament, with Crowe wanting to share words of wisdom and life mottos to live by. Perhaps he forgot it is a motion picture: show me, don't tell me. He sure went all out, taking on the acting, screenplay, directing, even the song text. In all of this effort to stress the importance of friendship, I wondered where Crowe's friends were to tell him that this was a fluke. Friends don't let friends make bad movies. - nilcaron - 3 April 2023
When Rza appears you know what to expect
This film is a complete fail, from cast to story, from music to the message that story brings, nothing to keep from this piece of c****
A film can tell a lot from the cast, you can understand everything what's on the production or direction's mind, here everything got vlear when Rza appeared, and this very very bad actors like the guy « specialised » in art, nobody in the world is eating this story, neither the message that is completely childish.
There is not one part in the movie to keep, the way characters are developed is so poor, it looks like a student movie that ticks every case his teacher taught him on how to strcture a script. Total fail. - realityinmind - 28 December 2022
Amazing cast, boring story, garbage movie
If you think about it, the story is just a mishmash of ideas strung together into a boring film that spends too much time setting up the climax without actually justifying it, and then the movie just ends quickly with no resolution. Plus the entire story can only be reasoned via the main character having unlimited finances. Hella plot holes throughout with no explanation and plot devices that a 3yo can see through.
Pointless into scene with kids... the movie could exist without. Super rich guy goes to magical retreat to get a magical medicine (not over the counter btw) that "poisons" people in some unknown way that makes them tell the truth and is exasperated by adrenaline (not making this up) and causes death if too much is ingested. All we know is that he is a great poker player and he is dying from cancer. And he and his friend created some program that is used by the govt (justifies being rich, as if the govt would just pay a single person trillions of dollars for software). All bur one of his friends are horrible people that have wronged him in some way... one is sleeping with his wife and got her pregnant (problem is never resolved btw), another is a politician that arranged to have his crazy brother steal millions worth of art in front of everyone (hello police??! Jeez), another is trying to steal his fortune when he dies by setting up a trust, and another is planning on committing suicide in his living room. So what does the main character do? Rewards them all with $5mil each after they didn't have any faith in his company and no care for him as a friend. Only the RZA is a decent guy..... and he's black! So take THAT racism!! (Movie was made by Australians, so you get the real irony here if you know Australians!)
Not to mention, dude's friend sacrificed dude's employee (at the gate) so he doesn't get caught cheating on his wife. Smfh. I mean, this movie makes no sense.... not a single character is likeable except for the RZA. - Steve_Jax - 14 December 2022
A little of Poker, and nothing much else
Finally a game of poker, where 5 or 6 wealthy friends gamble big for the sake of old times at the lake!
No way, forget the poker, there is just a little, a couple of hands maybe, then the dealer is told to get home.
Plot is not clear at all, especially at the beginning, screenplay has its problems, and wealth is all over the place.
The thieves sub-plot is ill-thought, very simplified, and to little or no use at all, to the true meaning of the movie.
Tries hard to be poetic, philosophical and spiritual, but hits hard on the concrete.
The movie is good aesthetically, like many nowadays, shows off beautiful cars (Maybach, Rolls-Royce, Bentley), and tries to tell us a good story, but here stop the positive things.
One view is enough, not exactly a squander of 90min, but I've seen better. - Godswife15 - 2 December 2022
Banal boring and BAD
Good grief! Did Mr Crowe blackmail these people to appear this boring boring boring cr@p. Terrible storyline, terrible acting and utterly banal. I think all his screaming about wanting to lock people down during the pandemic has damaged his brain. I mean poison on the outside of the glass?? From a " mystic " that totally out of ( admittedly very shallow ) character whom he knew would give him it??? What is this? The pink panther? I think they all appeared in this to get a wee jolly in their home country and make easy money. That's the problem with these made for tv ( and yes making a film for Netflix or Prime or Disney channel is TV! ) films, there is no pressure for it to be good, they have a captive audience and there is no ticket sales to show how bad this is. Lazy writing, lazy acting . Sorry I wasted my time . - neilwaynesmith - 27 November 2022
Slow-burner but quietly entertaining
Crowe stars, writes the screenplay & co-writes the music, so. I'm guessing he was fairly well invested in the project... I called it a slow burner, but it is a pleasant diversion that lasts about the right length of time.
The arrival of the adult characters is helpfully interspersed with flashback images of their younger selves to stop you guessing.
Obviously the long overdue reunion is interspersed with grudges, various degrees of betrayal, guilty secrets etc. But they aren't overblown Equally, this isn't a Die Hard 'one-man-takes-on-an-army' style plot, it's stylishly underplayed and is better for it.
Couple of things to look out for if you last to the credits; The number of producers seems to outweigh the cast and; What on earth did all of those stunt people do? - bobrathome - 23 November 2022
takes a long while to get going
Billionaire Jake Foley (Russell Crowe) invites 4 of his oldest friends since boyhood to a high stakes poker game hoping that they will reveal their secrets to him as he felt betrayed by them in the past. He offers Alex (Aden Young), Mike (Liam Hemsworth), and Paul (Steve Bastoni) and Andrew (RZA) his lawyer the luxury cars they arrived in or $5-mllion in chips to play Texas Hold 'Em.
Before the invite Jake had visited a Shaman (Jack Thompson) who had given him a truth serum of sorts and taken in small doses the truth will be revealed, but lethal in larger doses. To get them started jake tells them he poisoned them, but not in a lethal way, but in a reveal of secrets kind of way, and Jake reveals that he is terminally ill with pancreatic cancer. And that Shaman helped him with his exit.
We don't see much of the game as thieves led by Victor (Paul Tassone) enter the house intent on stealing priceless paintings hanging on Jake's walls. From a panic room Jake and friends watch the thieves.
Notables: Bad guy Victor played by Paul Tassone did quite a bit of overacting in here; Jake's second wife Nicole played by Brooke Satchwell; and Jake's daughter Rebecca played by Molly Grace.
But, yes, there is a "but" this may well have played better if we could clearly understand the Aussie accents as all the friends and Victor and his gang were all Aussies. The Director should have known the dialogues and banter suffered because of the unintelligible accents at times. Had They talked slower it may have helped, but they talked too fast. Bummer.
I kept reading that Jake's house was a mansion. I didn't see a mansion. I saw a one-story layout that was loaded with latest technology. Kind of nice, but a mansion? Where did they get that idea?
I had no idea what was going on for the first 30-minutes or so. A thriller? Hardly. Okay, maybe the thieves shooting up the place? Hmmm....... This didn't really look like too much of a story. The title was unconvincing, too. Russsell Crowe should stick to acting, but he was one of the writers of this, and he also directed it, too. (3/10)
Violence; Yes.
Sex: No.
Nudity: No.
Humor: No.
Language: Yes.
Rating: D.
