DEAL

Available at Amazon for $19.99 from August 19th"You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run ..." Thank you for the advice, Kenny Rogers. I think it IS time to run ... far, far away from Deal. Awful in every respect, Deal pretends to tell the story of a young hotshot poker player named Alex Stillman (Bret Harrison), who is mentored by a retired card hustler with a gambling problem named Tommy Vinson (Burt Reynolds) as they attempt to go to Las Vegas and win the big poker tournament and eight million dollars. Along the way, Vinson tried to teach Alex about life and women, even as his wife abandons him for returning to the card table. Every last cliche in film history is turned over in the rush to the stunningly predictable finale. Writer/director Gil Cates Jr. needs to find another profession. Quickly. Swooping in to profit on the current poker craze in America, Cates has assembled a sloppy, thought-free script completely devoid of character or plot development. To make matters much worse, he then films that script in a style resembling Plan 9 From Outer Space-meets-Saw, managing to look cheap and frenetic at the same time. Take, for example, the final poker showdown - supposedly taking place on ESPN in the biggest tournament in the world - which looks as if it was filmed in a basement. The tension hoped for in every scene evaporates pathetically, as Cates allows his scenes to meander aimlessly and fill with dead air. The dialogue, some of worst lines written for a 35mm print in a very long time, bellyflops horrendously, punctuated laughably with pregnant pauses and hushed, meaningful stares. The cast is almost uniformly terrible, their performances wavering somewhere between lifeless and embarrassing. Reynolds shambles around the chintzy sets as if he has Alzheimers, coughing out his lines in a low grumble like Christian Bale as Batman follwoing a stroke. Harrison is even worse, as he apparently thinks his sly smirking will pass as character work. Cringe-worthy cameos are turned in by Charles Durning and Maria Mason, although they can hardly be considered at fault; they are saddled with the most underwritten roles in multimedia entertainment since Mr. Peanut was dropped as the spokesperson for Planters. Worst of all is Gary Grubbs, who brings his McDroopy persona to bear on Cates' limp and stereotypical version of an overbearing father figure. God, this cast is terrible. This film has a bewildering lack of coherent development. Lessons are learned mysteriously offscreen. Chemistry between characters is nonexistent. Subplots waft in and out of the movie like a fine fog over a toxic dump. For instance, at one point in the film Vinson hires a hooker to teach young Alex about love. We are treated to a montage of the pair dating, followed by Vinson bitching to Alex about being distracted. And then Alex finds out she's a hooker. Then, she disappears for the rest of the film. What any of that means is beyond me. Wow ... just plain awful. In poker terms, this film is flop. EXTRAS The film sucks, and the makers of this DVD know it. There aren't really any extras here, other than a behind-the-scenes doc that pretends to teach something about card playing. Bullshit. OVERALL Unless you really like to watch things that make you uncomfortable - or you are hopelessly addicted to card playing to the point of harming yourself - you seriously need to avoid this. Believe me.

rating: 0.5