Plot
A young man (Damon) is a reformed gambler who must return to playing big stakes poker to help a friend pay off loan sharks.

Release Year: 1998

Rating: 7.3/10 (61,626 voted)

Critic's Score: 54/100

Director: John Dahl

Stars: Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Paul Cicero

Storyline
A young man (Damon) is a reformed gambler who must return to playing big stakes poker to help a friend pay off loan sharks.

Writers: David Levien, Brian Koppelman

Cast:
Matt Damon - Mike McDermott
Edward Norton - Lester 'Worm' Murphy
Paul Cicero - Russian Thug
John Turturro - Joey Knish
Ray Iannicelli - Kenny
Gretchen Mol - Jo
Famke Janssen - Petra
Merwin Goldsmith - Sy
John Malkovich - Teddy KGB
Martin Landau - Abe Petrovsky
Sonny Zito - Tony
Michael Rispoli - Grama
Melina Kanakaredes - Barbara
Mal Z. Lawrence - Irving
Josh Mostel - Zagosh

Taglines: Pick a card, any card

Release Date: 11 September 1998

Filming Locations: Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA

Box Office Details

Budget: $12,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend: $8,459,126 (USA) (13 September 1998) (2176 Screens)

Gross: $22,905,674 (USA) (8 November 1998)

Runtime: 121 min

Trivia:
Matt Damon and Edward Norton played the $10,000 buy-in Texas Hold 'Em championship event at the 1998 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. During the first of four days, Matt Damon had pocket Kings and was knocked out by former world champion and poker legend Doyle Brunson who held pocket Aces.

Goofs:
Continuity: When Worm and Mike go over to Gramma's place, Worm is chewing a cocktail stick the whole time which he throws away when he begins to yell at Gramma. Gramma promptly grabs him by the collar and the cocktail stick is back in his mouth again.

Quotes:
[first lines]
Mike McDermott: Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.

One of the most widely underrated movies of our time

Rating: 10/10

Rounders is I believe, one of the most widely underrated movies of our time.

I first saw this movie as it was a 'bonus DVD' thrown in for free with my DVD player back in 2000, so naturally I didn't expect much (as the other bonus DVD's were very mediocre), but what I found was a very enjoyable movie.

At that stage in my life, I had only played a little poker as a child growing up, and never 'Texas Hold'em' so to be honest, a lot of the terminology went 'over my head', but even so, the film became an instant favorite of mine purely because of the performances.

The film has so much star power, and yet none of the fine actors try to 'steal' scenes. Damon, Norton, Malkovich, Landau ... and then the fine supporting cast of Turturro, Jansen, and Mol.

In fact, there is a scene with Martin Landau and Matt Damon that is perhaps one of the most beautiful performances I have seen in a long time between two very fine actors.

So even if you're not a poker player, the story is tighter than a lot of Hollywood 'pop fluff' and the performances alone can sell the film as an enjoyable movie capable of multiple viewings.

But ... if you start playing poker and get really into what they are talking about, and reading about poker theory (like Doyle Brunson's book Super System) then the movie moves up to a whole different level.

A lot of the time, Hollywood will attempt to cover a specialized error, and usually fail, or at best only partially succeed, whereas Rounders managed to get everything 'spot on', just look at the US DVD, it has a commentary track from 4 World Champion Poker players, if that's not a stamp of approval then I don't know what is.

When you factor in how the film can be enjoyed by someone who has little to no idea about Poker (as I did when I first saw the film) just because of the tight story and stellar performances and also be 'immortalized' by poker enthusiasts as the best movie ever made on the subject (and truth be told, a big reason why the World Series of Poker has been doubling it's entries year after year) ... what you have here is a true gem that works on so many levels and what I believe is, as I said initially, one of the most widely underrated movies of our time.

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