Rounders (1998) John Malkovich as Teddy KGB. Mike McDermott: narrating while playing against teddy KGB Here's the beauty of this game: I just got top two pair on the flop and I want to keep him in the hand. Against your average guy, I'd set a 'bear trap', hardly bet at all, let him walk into it.
Movie Info Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) loses his money in a poker game against Russian gangster Teddy 'KGB' (John Malkovich). Under pressure from his girlfriend, Jo (Gretchen Mol), he promises to. Twenty years ago, long before professional poker became the main staple of late-night ESPN programming, the movie Rounders hit theaters. It did alright at the box office, but would go on to become a cult classic among the type of college-aged dudes who only own three movies and one of them is definitely Fight Club. After reading the new oral history from The Ringer, it's easy to see why. John Dahl made one of the nineties best movies in the shape of 'The Last Seduction', and as far as noirs go it takes a bit of beating. Never quite hitting those heights since, his ode to high stakes poker,'Rounders' is the other cult film on his cv. Poker films have a chequered history in the movies. With Tenor, maker of GIF Keyboard, add popular John Malkovich Rounders animated GIFs to your conversations. Share the best GIFs now.
John Malkovich's Son Loewy Malkovich
Year 1998
Director John Dahl
Genre Drama, Crime
Rounders John Malkovich Poker Game
'Get your money in when you have the best of it. Protect it when you don't.'
Matt Damon - Mike McDermott'I've often seen these people, these squares at the table, short stack and long odds against them. All their outs gone. One last card in the deck that can help them. I used to wonder how they could let themselves get into such bad shape, and how the hell they thought they could turn it around.'
Matt Damon - Mike McDermott'Mike, I learned it from you. You always told me this was the rule. Rule number one: Throw away your cards the moment you know they can't win. Fold the fucking hand.' - Jo
'That's the safe play. I told Worm you can't lose what you don't put in the middle. But you can't win much either.'
Matt Damon - Mike McDermott'- Worm: What did I ever do to that guy?
- Mike McDermott: You fucked his mother.
- Worm: [amused] Yeah but she was a good looking older woman you gotta give me that.'
Edward Norton - Worm
Matt Damon - Mike McDermott'We can't run from who we are, our destiny chooses us.'
Martin Landau - Abe Petrovsky'Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker. Guys around here will tell ya, you play for a living, it's like any other job. You don't gamble, you grind it out. Your goal is to win one big bet an hour, that's it.'
Matt Damon - Mike McDermott'- Moogie: Hey, lemme ask you a question. In the legalsense, can fuckin' Steinbrenner move the Yankees? Does he have the fuckin' right to just move them?
- Mike McDermott: How should I know that?
- Moogie: You didn't learn that yet?
- Mike McDermott: No, we get to Steinbrenner in third year law school.
- Moogie: Oh..'
- Moogie
Matt Damon - Mike McDermott'- Mike McDermott: I watch the cards but I also watch the player react to the cards. That's how I knew the DA made his two pair and judge Kaplan missed the flush, I was watching their eyes when they checked their river cards, their faces tell you everything.
- Abe Petrovsky: [confused] You watch the man? I never knew you had to calculate so much..' (continue)(continue reading)Matt Damon - Mike McDermott
Martin Landau - Abe Petrovsky- Worm: You know what always cheers me up, when I'm feeling shitty?
- Mike McDermott: No, what's that?
- Worm: Rolled up aces over kings. Check-raising stupid tourists and taking huge pots off of them. Playing all-night high-limit Hold'em at the Taj, 'where the sand turns to gold'. Stacks and towers of checks I can't even see over.Edward Norton - Worm
Matt Damon - Mike McDermottIn 'Confessions of a Winning Poker Player', Jack King said, 'Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career'. It seems true to me, cause walking in here, I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can't stop thinking of how.. (continue)(continue reading)
Matt Damon - Mike McDermott'- Worm: She's really got him by the balls.
- Petra: That's not so bad, is it?
- Worm: It depends on the grip!'Edward Norton - Worm
Famke Janssen - Petra'Why do you think the same five guys make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker every year? What, are they the luckiest guys in Las Vegas? It's a skill game Jo.'Matt Damon - Mike McDermott
'- Worm: I guess the sayings' true. In the poker game of life, women are the rake man. They are the fuckin' rake.
- Mike McDermott: What the fuck are you talkin' about. What saying?
- Worm: I don't know. There ought to be one though.'
Edward Norton - Worm
Matt Damon - Mike McDermott'First prize at the World Series of Poker is a million bucks. Does it have my name on it? I don't know. But, I'm gonna find out.'
Matt Damon - Mike McDermott'- Mike McDermott: What happened?
- Worm: Nothing, she closed her legs too fast!'Matt Damon - Mike McDermott
Edward Norton - Worm
Director John Dahl's quasi-SF thriller Unforgettable tanked in 1996, but he had already made a name for himself with a couple of crackling neo-noir pictures: Red Rock West and cult fave The Last Seduction. His new Rounders smells like a comeback picture, and it reinforces Dahl's reputation as a stylish, low-key chronicler of the lives of saps and scoundrels. The resulting picture is a thinking man's take on the game of poker that's vastly entertaining, yet fundamentally unsatisfying.
What Rounders lacks can be blamed squarely on a formulaic screenplay (by David Levien and Brian Koppelman) that relies on stock characters and fails to follow through on the dilemmas it creates. What it's best at is its whirlwind tour of the world of New York City 'rounders.' We're told that's a slang term for professional poker players, the kind who can tell what cards you're holding just by looking in your eyes. Rounders hop from one underground poker table to the next, posing as easy marks and then cleaning out their competition with an aw-shucks grin and an attitude that says 'golly, I can't believe how lucky I am tonight.' (The funniest scene has a bunch of pros sitting around an Atlantic City poker table, a veritable web spun to snare unwary fat-pocketed tourists.) The film is loaded with juicy tidbits in support of the thesis that poker is a game of skill rather than chance.
Matt Damon brings his highly touted good looks to the role of Mike McDermott, a one-time rounder who gave up the game after losing his bankroll to a local Russian mobster known as Teddy KGB (John Malkovich). Edward Norton makes an amiable and infuriating Worm, the inveterate cardsharp (and ex-con) who pulls Mike back into the game against the express wishes of tisk-tisking girlfriend Gretchen Mol. Damon earns his keep and then some, playing charming, smart, and just naive enough to let us believe that he could get himself into a real mess with a minimum of effort. Mol (seen also in Abel Ferrara's The Funeral) is china-doll pretty, but she brings nothing new to her insultingly thin role. Famke Janssen, however, makes a dynamite supporting player in her couple of minutes on-screen. And Martin Landau lends a studied gravity to his scenes as the law professor who takes an interest in the wayward Mike, warning him that we can't escape our destinies.
The range of unwritten rules Blackjack is a noble ancient card game which demands a kind of certain etiquette during performing. There are some do's and don'ts for gamblers while playing the game which are recommended to stick to. Unwritten Blackjack Rules Playing blackjack at on online casino versus playing in a real land casino is a bit different, with to certain 'unwritten blackjack rules'. When you play online, it's typically you against the computer and you let your mouse do the talking or signaling for you. In a land casino however, blackjack is a very social game. Blackjack unwritten rules.
Daily freeroll slot tournaments. As Mike's obvious nemesis, Malkovich is in full John-Malkovich-scenery-chewing mode, over-the-top and into orbit — so naturally there's got to be a scene in the film where the two of them hunker down over a deck of cards and McDermott tries to settle the score. Elsewhere, the baddest of bad omens — like a poker room full of state troopers — are so cavalierly ignored by Mike and Worm that the whole film feels telegraphed in advance, right up to the requisite happy ending. If the film has a message, it's that the most important thing is to follow your heart, even if that means your woman will ditch you, your teachers will flunk you out of school, and the Russian mafia will threaten to cut out your liver and mail it to your mother, postage due.
It's easy to grouse about the overly optimistic narrative, which demonstrates few ill effects of compulsive gambling and spectacularly poor judgment. But Hollywood has always rewarded risk-takers and, slightly seedy environment notwithstanding, this Miramax release is very much a Hollywood-style diversion. Rounders is happy to be an intriguing, exceptionally well-acted little drama with some insight into the game of poker and an absorbingly implausible story. It's rare that a movie lacking so much in logic and characterization is such fun to watch.
Directed by John Dahl
Written by David Levien & Brian Koppelman
Cinematography by Jean-Yves Escoffier
Edited by Scott Chestnut
Starring Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Gretchen Mol,
Famke Janssen, John Turturro, and John Malkovich
Theatrical aspect ratio: 2.35:1 (Super 35)
USA, 1998
