I bet you heard about The Forbidden Kingdom and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, even if you didn’t see them.  I’d also wager that you are familiar with Baby Mama, Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo, Iron Man—even Son of Rambow.  But how about about Deal?  No? Well, why not?  They were all released about the same time this spring.

Well, then, I bet you’ve heard about the World Poker Tour.  Texas Hold ’Em has been all the rage for the last two or three years, and you can’t seem to get away from it on cable.  There’s more poker being played on TV than there are wrestling matches, football games, golf, and NASCAR.  So there’s surely an appetite for Hold ’Em, which is the subject of Deal.

Plus, there have been a lot of films featuring gambling of all sorts in the last couple of years: 21, Lucky You, Smokin’ Aces, Lucky # Slevin, Cassandra’s Dream… but wait, did you see any of those, either?  No, probably not. 

But Deal fell off the radar even worse that those films did.  And it’s kind of surprising, too, considering that Deal is officially endorsed by the World Poker Tour, and is heavily touted by Big Time Hold ’Em winners.   “The best poker movie since Rounders,” says Joseph Hachem.  “The authentic poker movie,” declares Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari.  “The real deal,” pronounces Phil “The Unabomber” Laak.

Of course, all these poker pros would say that… because they’re in the film, playing themselves.

To be honest, there’s a lot of authenticity to Deal.  Director Gil Cates, Jr. may not be the seasoned filmmaker that his father is, and the material may not be the most profound stuff in the world, but Cates does manage to capture something of the world of high stakes poker.  The film may indeed be the best poker film since Rounders—but that might not be saying a lot, because I can’t even think of a poker film since Rounders that I cared for much.

This time out, though, what we’re really getting is The Color of Money repackaged for the world of Texas Hold ’Em.  The Paul Newman role is filled by Burt Reynolds (playing the part of Tommy Vinson), and the young buck played by Tom Cruise in Martin Scorsese’s billiards classic is this time named Alex, and he’s played by Bret Harrison.

(For those keeping score, you can kind of sense how things might go awry with this project.  Even Scorsese had to work really hard to make billiards exciting, and that was with Newman and Cruise in top form.  Here we’ve got poker, Cates helming, a stiff and past-his-prime Reynolds… and Harrison, competent and engaging, but hardly Tom Cruise.  Think, maybe, of Andrew McCarthy in his prime.)

The story has chip-off-the-old-block Alex chafing under parental expectations while having success beating the pants off his poker buddies and earning his way into a legit Vegas tourney courtesy of an Internet poker site.  In Vegas, he catches the of Tommy, who’s gone cold turkey for twenty-five years in order to keep his marriage together.  Aging Veteran teaches Young Buck the rope; Young Buck can’t keep his mind on the game, and disappoints both mentor and parents; Aging Veteran gets the itch back; and the two end up entering the same big $6 million World Poker Tour final.

And, as in The Color of Money, there are twists and turns along the way so we’re not really sure how things are going to turn out.  But we’re pretty sure that Laak, Hachem, and Esfandiari are all sort of the equivalent of Star Trek “red shirts,” so there aren’t that many plotting options… or all that many decent supporting performances.  (To be fair, The Color of Money featured some pretty dead ringers, too; but Forest Whitaker and John Turturro had dynamite bit roles, don’t forget.)

Harrison does well enough as Alex, but with Reynolds it’s hard to tell if he’s trying too hard to play laid back here, or whether he just doesn’t have the energy to do this stuff any more.  The celebrity appearances are rote at best, and the film’s finale is scripted, for dramatic effect, to deny Hold ’Em fans the thing that really makes the game fascinating: getting to see the players’ hole cards.  And then, after the game is over, Cates can’t trust us to figure things out on our own.

I’m afraid that I’m making this sound like a bad movie—which it is not.  It’s just that’s it’s not particularly gripping, either.  If the idea of The Color of Hold ’Em sounds interesting to you, or if you’re simply a big fan of The World Poker Tour, you might just enjoy it, too.  Maybe even more than I did.

At the same time, I’m guessing that there’s a reason this film dropped off the radar in its theatrical release: even its built-in audience asked to be dealt out.

Deal is rated PG-13 for “language, sexual content and brief drug use.”  That’s about right.  This is film that’s fit for teens and above, but it’s a bit mature for younger kids.

Courtesy of a national publicist, Greg viewed a promotional screener of Deal.

Also be sure to look for Greg’s interview with director Gil Cates, Jr. this Friday.