Review of "The Card Player" (DVD)

Dario Argento is a legendary director who has made some amazing, legendary, and brilliant horror movies in his career. "The Card Player" is not one of them.

I think I can guess how Argento came up with the idea for this film. He was probably sitting at his computer smoking a cigar and playing online poker at some gambling website and he thought to himself, "what if I was playing for someone's life instead of just for a few bucks?" Wouldn't that be scary? No! It wouldn't be scary, it would be silly. And that's the problem with this movie. It's not scary, it's silly. It almost seems like a parody of a thriller/horror movie. I am still not totally convinced that Argento didn't make this film with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

The plot basically goes like this: Some killer kidnaps girls and makes the police play against him at online poker for the life of the hostage. When the police lose, the girl gets hacked up, live on the killer's webcam. Somehow, the police can't track him down, even though he's (apparently) hosting the game and his own webcam. At one point the villain actually does the ultimate in computer movie cliches, he/she uploads a virus to the police while they are trying to trace his location. I can't remember if the virus has 3D effects and a cartoon face or not, but don't they usually in movies? Does it sound like serious horror? It gets better.

Instead of putting their time into tracking down the killer, the police decide to track down the world's best online poker player so that he can play against the killer and help the police win the games, thereby saving the girls. The guy that the police determine is the world's greatest online poker player looks to be all of about 17 years old and he certainly doesn't seem to be very rich for a guy who is the king of poker. Besides that point, isn't electronic poker mostly a matter of luck? That's just a tiny point, there are bigger ones that I won't subject you to.

Once the police bring in the world's greatest poker player, he plays the killer in place of the police as another girl is kidnapped. The killer gets closer to the police, more people die, the investigation goes on as it all works towards a climax. You won't believe the climax - if you thought the premise of the movie was silly, wait to you see the grand finale.

I was sort of waiting for the killer get a Blogger account and starts blogging about his "mad p0ker skillz". Maybe that will be part of Argento's next movie, "Blogs of Death". Seriously, though, hopefully a legendary horror director like Dario Argento will stay away from the internet altogether with his next picture. "The Card Player" is a mess and it's not scary. There were some cool Argento scenes, like when the killer eventually ends up in the same house as one of the police officers. But a few cool moments cannot save this movie.

On a scale of one to ten I'd give it a four just for the fact that Dario Argento made the movie. Unless you feel the need to see every movie by this director, or you're really into video poker, you might want to pass on this one.

"The Card Player" is available on DVD in with and English dubbed soundtrack. If your favorite DVD store doesn't carry it, try Poker Industries Import DVD Store.