As a young girl Alicia Ace Anderson had been taught the fine art and mathematical probabilities of Texas Hold-em poker by the father she adored. But that world came to an abrupt end when her father was taken from her in a fatal car accident. Years later as she enters medical school she will need to call upon the skills her fathe taught her as she struggles with the rigorous training mounting financial pressure and the seamier side of medicine. Her friends and fellow students combine their unique talents and skills to produce a team that may well be the ultimate poker... machine. But as the stakes in both the casinos and the operating room continue to rise Ace comes to understand what her father taught her: in order to really live you need to go all in. [show more]
Having recently fallen in love all over again with John Dahl's cult 90's flick "Rounders", I could be excused for thinking it fate that I'd unintentionally stumbled upon another film that bases its plot around the most popular card game on the planet, Texas hold'em poker. "All In" stars Dominique Swain, Michael Madsen and Academy Award winner Louis Gosset Jr, all of whom had impressed me enough at some point in their respective careers to disregard the film's feeble premise and take the risk for a measly £3. In hindsight, I should have "laid it down".
***
Alicia "Ace" Anderson (Swain) seemingly has the world at her feet as she sits at final table of the "All In Poker Tournament", with a cool $5 million in prize money awarded to the winner. Rewind 15 years and life was very much different for the Anderson family. Alicia's deadbeat father, Seal (Madsen) - as in 'Navy Seal', not 'Kiss from a Rose' Seal - walks out on his family after a heated argument with his overly religious wife, who has grown tired of his drinking and gambling. He soon finds himself in debt to a local mobster after losing an "All In" poker game and, unable to pay the debt, he is driven to suicide, by way of his car and a cliff.
Fast forward to the present day and happy-clappy Alicia heads off to med-school, where she befriends a couple of stereotypically horny college guys - one of whom leaves even the most open-minded of viewers in no doubt that he is indeed a raving sex pest - and unleashes them on her predictably gorgeous female flatmates. The group quickly bond and delude themselves into believing that Alicia's victory in a game of strip poker is no fluke and that she is, in fact, a great poker player worthy of gambling away their entire life savings in the hopes that it will pay off their student debts.
Not content with the thrills provided at a med school that allows first year students - still being quizzed on how many bones there are in the human body - to operate on patients at the local hospital combined with the discovery that its chief resident Dr. Pennington is extorting the immigrant patients, Alicia resorts gambling with her friend's money as she plays more with reckless abandonment than strategy - the kind of stuff reserved for a Saturday night online freeroll. In true movie fashion, Alicia continually wins on the last turn of every last card thus clawing her way to a final table consisting of an eclectic mix of real life poker personalities, her not-so-dead father, his long-time friend Caps (Gosset Jr.) and evil Dr. Pennington - a moonlighting card sharp, we are expected to believe. With so many distractions at the table, can Alicia hold her nerve and take it down?
***
"All In" is such an abysmal attempt at filmmaking, it's hard to know where to begin with its faults. The plot is so convoluted with ludicrous developments, clichés and hand after hand of unlikely poker outcomes, the idea that it took four people to write this train wreck of a screenplay is beyond belief - let alone the fact that it was financed with a whopping $3.5m budget, screened at prestigious film festivals and subsequently secured a distribution deal.
It's an injustice that anyone has been paid for writing this horrendous script, containing some of the most cringe-worthy lines you'll ever hear in a film; "Seal, I always liked you. You fought for your country, a Navy Seal" and "I used the body of a homeless man who died the same day. I got it from Woody, at the morgue". For a film that doesn't know whether it wants to be a family drama or an episode of 'Doctors', perhaps because it draws so much on the latter to pad out the screen time, it's fair to say the film fails on just about every level.
The credits read as an exhaustive list of people who can't do their job properly; from a casting director that thinks she's casting for a blue movie to a makeup and costume department that neglect to age Alicia's mother in a scene transition that lasts 15 years. However, the award for most incompetent crew member must surely go to DoP Jeff Baustert. So intent is he on blinding the viewer with his atrocious attempts at lighting each scene, not even closing your eyes and counting to ten can prevent you from channelling the merciless tongue of Christian Bale.
As for the cast, I've seen more believable character portrayals with better dialogue and delivery in porn movies. Dominique Swain is completely out of her comfort zone as a lead actress. Overwhelmed by reaction shots, she resorts to pulling stupid faces and generally makes you loathe her existence both on-screen and as an actress. Michael Madsen fails to convince, not only as an amateur poker player and estranged father but as a human being. Most laughable of all is Louis Gosset Jr.'s vision of his character as he continually repeats his catchphrase, "is you in or is you out", in a manner that can best be described as a jive-talking stroke victim.
A large proportion of the blame for this incompetent film should be reserved for director/producer Nick Vallelonga. Budding filmmakers the world over should view this film as a learning tool for how not to make a film. If he had any credibility as a director, he would never have allowed a majority of scenes in this film to suffer from shaky camera work, rigid scene transitions and visual & sound editing that could surely be rivalled by those people that lurk around the Apple Store for free tutorials in Final Cut Pro.
"All In" isn't just a losing bet in the B movie wheel of fortune, it's an "I've lost all of my money, the keys to my car, the clothes on my back. and now I've got to walk home naked in blizzard conditions" experience that will leave you scarred for life and in need of a warm shower.
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An experienced female gambler tries to leave the card tables and high-risk lifestyle behind her by going to medical school. Mounting debts soon force her back into the betting world--but this time she has a grand scheme in mind that should allow her to win enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her life
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