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.
~Rounders
Well if there is a better poker movie I sure as hell haven’t seen it. This may be some source of argument down the line, maybe there is some movie I haven’t heard of yet, or some old movie that I am yet to discover. I’m open for suggestions if someone has a good one, but for now Rounders is the gold standard.
Rounders has it all:
Matt Damon-check
Ed Norton-check
Voice-overs-check
Famke Jannsen-check (hey, I just thought of another poker babe)
Cheesy accents-check
Johnny Fucking Chan-check
Check, check , check!!!! He trap me!
So many good quotes come from this movie you can practically play an entire night using nothing but sound bites. The starting scene, the final scene, man, I’ve seen this movie over and over and I’ll still watch it on a lazy hangover Saturday when it comes on the TV.
If you are a poker fan and haven’t seen the movie yet, go out and buy it, I say “buy” and not “rent” because like me you are going to have it on loop for a while.
Beyond just good entertainment, Rounders is a metaphor for life. Don’t give up what you were meant to do, and what makes you happy just to try and please someone else, because in the end neither of you will be happy.
For the sake of the one poker fan out there that hasn’t seen the movie yet I’m not going to spoil it by giving away the ending. Nor will I by going into it too much, but I will link the trailer and maybe that piques your interest.
Tags: best poker movies, ed norton, matt damon, movies, poker, rounders, top 10, top poker movies