Jacomedi A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

toddxdavis This is a talented cast and they play together great. It takes a minute to get the feel of the film but there is not the frequent inspiration to fast forward to a point you care to begin watching.The Man's Discovery Channel reference is funny considering The Man and the Discovery Channel are neighbors to the north. And the Super Glue reference, subtle and dark while also amusing.A few flaws, all easy to overlook. The over use of 'sperm' when they should use semen. I guess the writers like saying the wrong s-word.

jimbo-53-186511 As part of his initiation, rookie detective Stan Jeter (Beau Mirchoff) takes part in a poker night with some of the best and most experienced cops in the business. Whilst participating in Poker Night our rookie detective must listen to stories from each of the officers highlighting their best arrests, their best achievements or their best examples of heroism. Initially, Jeter takes these stories with a pinch of salt until he finds himself the victim of a kidnapping by a vicious psychopath. Jeter must use all that he's learnt from his more experienced colleagues to try to escape from the mad man whilst he simultaneously tries to rescue a young girl who has also been kidnapped by the psychopath.Poker Night is a mix between Saw and Training Day which are two films that I found to be enjoyable and both of these 'aspects' of the plotting were strong enough to hold my interest in the story. Unfortunately, when I watch a film and instantly identify similarities between the film I've watched and similar films that have preceded it (particularly similar films that I've really liked) then it's hard not to cast a critical eye over a film like Poker Night....The structure of the film was something that I found it hard to get used to and, for me, Poker Night seemed to suffer from what I like to call a 'Stop/Start' narrative. What I mean here is that I felt as though every time the picture started to gather momentum (i.e focusing on the kidnapping) the picture would then Stop (by going back to the storytelling). The idea behind this film is that our rookie is supposed to put theory into practice in order to get the better of the man that kidnapped him based on the life experiences of his senior colleagues. However, I just never really felt like there was much of a connection between the stories that Jeter is being told by his colleagues and the way that Jeter tries to deal with the kidnapper. To me Poker Night came across as one part philosophical character studying and one part torture porn, but the 2 elements never really seem to fuse together and never felt as though they were part of the same story. This results in a film that, at times, is sluggish during its storytelling mode, but when the focus is on Jeter and the kidnapper it is much livelier and engrossing. I don't have a problem with talky sections of films if they serve a purpose, but as I've already mentioned I just didn't feel that connection here.I've touched upon the fact that this film reminded me of Saw and Training Day, but it sadly comes off as a poor man's version of each of these films. It lacks Saw's intelligence and doesn't have the intense storytelling that we saw in Training Day. To compensate for this, the film tries to be clever by tying itself in knots with twist after twist towards the end which to be honest started to become increasingly more far-fetched and ridiculous as the film reached the finish line. The open-ended finale leaves it open for a sequel which is questionable to me given the fact that this first film is only good rather than being brilliant.To me Poker Night is at its best when the focus is on Jeter, the kidnapper and the girl as these scenes provide us with some intensity and excitement. I would have preferred it if the film would have been more of a battle of wits/race against time horror/thriller (which is how it was sold on Sky Movies). Sadly, the storytelling aspect of the film is episodic, a bit tedious and for the most part feels unrelated from the action. A good film thanks to a number of well-executed and intense set-pieces, but not the brilliant film that it could, and should have been.

wcb123 I found this film very entertaining. It seems to take various styles of 90's films and roll them up into one, it feels old school but at the same time it remains original and fresh. The blend of genres, its fast moving pace, the surreal flashbacks and the way it's narrated make it feel like it could be based on a graphic novel/comic book.The acting is top notch by everyone and the directing/editing was flawless.63pc is a good score on here but i would personally say it's a 6.9 verging into the early 7's. The RT and Metacritic scores are definitely too low.Watch it, it is fun and at the same time oddly quite disturbing!I'll be keeping an eye out for more of Greg Francis' stuff for sure.

begob Thanks to the other reviewers - that's the only reason I watched this.Not a great film, but it becomes fascinating as it roller-coasts along.First up, a lame voice over - verbose, flat, abstract. Followed by a sequence of heroic cop tales using the conceit of a poker game where each veteran has a lesson to teach the rookie. Interwoven with this is the main plot, in which the rookie is kidnapped by a serial killer and imprisoned in his lair.The tales are uneven. The point is that each cop has to discard the system and do what he thinks is right, which results in a couple of shoot-first-ask-questions-later murders. Entertaining, but the self justification had zero irony.The dialogue (like the VO) is not as good as it thinks it is, and there's a lot of "we're laughing because the script says LAUGHTER". Baaad writing.But then ... we get weird humour. The serial killer explains his back story, and there are some surreal little scenes of the serial killer community. Then the rookie explains his back story, and suddenly this thing turns into an unexpected puzzle.I thought all the cops at the poker table were already dead, reminiscing in purgatory. But no - it's a sort of Mulholland Drive trick, and the story powers on to a clear resolution.Hectic, all over the place, but worth watching.