Dizzying swings and high stakes, gripping tension and smart-arse lines. Hollywood always nurtured a healthy obsession with the world of vice- particularly, gambling- and glorified the archetypal gambler.
A floury of iconic characters landed a seat in legend, from the high-rollers in Casino to the sharkish thick-accented Malkovich in Rounders and the card magicians in Maverick.
There’s no more thrilling cinema than a bunch of card-counting, quick-witted blokes sitting around the green felt table, munching on cigars, shooting straight flushes and trading in lighting bolt bullets.
Sorting through this crowded pantheon of top fictional gamblers, which performance etched itself most into our hearts?
Let’s see, the Oscar goes to…
Swingers- The Blackjack Double-Downer
“They’re gonna give daddy the Rainman suite, you dig that!”
It’s been two decades since Swingers rolled up on screen, and still the catchphrase “Vegas, baby, Vegas!” hasn’t aged a single day beyond the neon-lit lure of the Strip.
Star Jon Favreau (the comedian and director of last year’s Jungle Book, not to be confused with Jon Favreau, the speechwriter of former president’s Barack Obama) brilliantly delivered the everyman’s casino jitters- you never take a high-roller blackjack table lightly.
While Vince Vaughn, in a display of effortless cool and throughout steady sips of Martinis could double down like none other, with the certainty of a clueless gambler.
If you’re down on your luck, here’s a movie that will sympathize with you.
Run Lola Run- The Roulette Soprano
“The ball is round, a game lasts 90 minutes, everything else is pure theory. Off we go!”
Wear eardrums if you ever play the German roulette, that’s the lesson we got from Run Lola Run. Oh, and bet like your life depended on a win.
In a race against time to rescue her boyfriend, Lola storms into a casino, gambles her life’s savings on 20 black, spouts a devilish scream like an erupting fussy volcano, and wins against the roulette’s wicked odds- that’s 37 to 1.
Rounders- The Texas Hold’em Whizz-Kid
“If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.”
“No limit Texas Holdem is the Cadillac of poker”. And like the Cadillac, the tension reaches hundreds of heart beats per second as Matt Damon unlearns the legal ropes of the game and steps into its back rooms of card sharks and broken jaws.
Rituals of the underground gambling scene seem to have gathered some age dust ever since the more glamorous online casinos like Takebonus have imported slot machines, no deposit bonus codes and poker tournaments into the home or onto the mobile screen.
All the more reason to watch the veteran casino movies of the 1990s. A trip down memory lane when victory was all about face-to-face, razor-sharp bluffing.
Tombstone- The Wild West Cardslinger
“We started a game we never got to finish. Play for Blood, remember?”
Do you know that feeling when you’re so enthralled by a poker game that you don’t want to leave the table?
Marathon sessions of Texas Hold’em can peak to days on end (the Guinness Record belongs to Phil Laak who managed to keep himself- and his aces- straight for the entire duration of his 115 consecutive hours game).
Perhaps one of his sources of inspiration was none other than Doc Holiday- Val Kilmer sporting a ridiculously villainous moustache and slowly descending into whiskey-induced delirium tremens.
Now, that can’t be good for a steady hand as a cardslinger, can it?