Getting Sucked Back In

There was a time when poker was the it thing in pop culture. Whether it was Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo, or games of the World Series of Poker on ESPN, or any one of a number of shows or movies that features characters playing poker in a few scenes, poker spent a solid period out in “respectable” media, letting everyone see it and learn the game in ways many hadn’t done before. I think, though, that much of this interest came from one movie that made the whole underground poker culture seem hot and interesting: Rounders.

There were certainly plenty of movies about gambling, and poker in particular, before Rounders came along, but few managed to get you as deep into the world of the game as this movie. You were dropped into a world where the characters not only played Texas Hold’em (which, at least in the world of the movie, is the “purest” form of poker around, and it’s also the game most often played at the World Series of Poker events) but talked about it. You learned the game, in a way, as you watched, and you got invested in the machinations at the table, the rise and fall of the games, and you felt it when the game turned. It was impressive, making a game that is pretty insular with its language and guidance, and turning it into something not just that people would want to watch but that seemed cool, too.

But then it helps that while the film is about poker it’s not really about poker. It’s a film about a guy who left that life behind but gets sucked back in when a friend of his needs help. It’s not quite a hero’s journey as the main character, Mike, it going back to a life he’d seen before, dropping back into a world he’d escaped once already, but you do still identify with him as the protagonist even as he makes some bad decisions and slides into a world he probably shouldn’t have. He got a taste of something he wanted and was enticed back. It’s hard to resist, which only makes him more human and more relatable. For all the trouble he gets into, Mike is the most human and interesting aspect of this movie.

The film opens with Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) sitting down at the underground poker table of Teddy “KGB” (John Malkovich), a Russian gangster deep in the gambling scene. Overconfident, and sure he can beat KGB, Mike ends up putting his whole bankroll, over thirty grand, on a single hand, and then loses it. Stunned, sure he could win, Mike backs out of the world. He takes a part time job from a friend, Joey Knish (John Turturro), and promises his girlfriend, Jo (Gretchen Mol), that he’s done with poker forever. He throws himself into work, and law school, and avoids poker for several months.

But then a friend of his, Lester "Worm" Murphy (Edward Norton), gets out of prison. While Mike has gone straight, trying to keep himself clean, Worm hasn’t learned anything from his time inside. Instead he’s only gotten better at his cons and games, learning how to cheat at poker with practiced ease. He asks Mike to join him in some games, but Mike refuses, instead simply introducing Worm around and vouching for him. This doesn’t work so well, though, when Worm hits a losing streak and ends up charging a bunch of money to Mike’s name. Worm then reveals to Mike that he’s in deep to KGB and has KGB’s goon, Grama (Michael Rispoli), on his tail, and since Mike vouched for Worm they’re in it together. Now they have to find games and play their hearts out before KGB comes for them both… even if it means Jo might just leave Mike behind for breaking his promises.

It’s interesting the path Rounders takes for its hero. In a standard film Mike would dip his toes back in only to realize that the world of poker wasn’t for him. He’d find some way to save the day, earning the money needed to get Worm out of the hole, and then both he and his buddy would leave the crime world, going straight together while Mike finds a way to make it all up to Jo. “Poker is bad, don’t be bad,” would be the message and everything about the film would lead our hero to that conclusion. Rounders doesn’t take that path and, matter of fact, doesn’t even seem to think the crime world Mike finds himself in is really all that bad. Not really.

Instead, the movie seems to say, “this is your calling, Mike. You should pursue it.” Hell, it doesn’t just “seem” to say that; it literally has a character, Mike’s professor Judge Abe Petrovsky (Martin Landau) say just that. “To help you find your calling is a mitzvah.” Mike is a natural poker player who is phenomenal at the game (reading people, predicting cards, knowing just what to do), and the fact that he left the game behind, the movie is saying, was the wrong lesson to take. Yes, it might drive a wedge between him and those around him, but maybe that wasn’t the life for him after all. It’s weird to find a movie that says, “go for the gambling, this is the life for you,” but that’s what makes Rounders different and interesting.

KGB is the antagonist our hero has to defeat, although it’s hard to say that he’s really a villain. He’s set up at the start as Mike’s nemesis, the smug guy that takes his money and sends him packing off to a life of menial work and college classes. But Grama works for KGB, and we know that at some point the confrontation between Mike and KGB has to happen. When the poker does happen it feels like David going up against Goliath, but KGB is never really the bad guy. He’s smug, he’s rude, he’s a bit of an ass, but at the same time it’s Worm that goes into debt against KGB, and it’s Mike vouching for Worm that gets our hero in trouble as well. Nowhere in that equation is KGB the villain, he’s just the criminal Worm goes to for scratch.

The real villain of the piece, frankly, is Worm. Although he’s Mike’s friend, he’s a bad friend. At every turn he gets Mike into trouble, racking up debts at poker houses, smearing his friend’s name with mobsters, and then getting Mike sucked into the trouble with KGB. Plus, he’s a cheat, which is a kind of poker Mike doesn’t play. A late-movie scene has Mike winning in a game with a bunch of cops, and everyone is having a good time, but when Worm shows up and starts his card cheating ways, things eventually go downhill and it ruins things for both men. Worm bails on the trouble, skipping town, but Mike stands up for himself, proving who is the better man. Worm can’t even stand with his friend showing just how shitty he really is.

The other surprising turn of the film is that it doesn’t seem concerned with getting Jo and Mike together in the end. Jo sets the choice up as either her or poker, but we can tell (not just from how he plays but from everything the movie tells us) that poker is Mike’s passion. She doesn’t get that and, clearly, never will. A different kind of movie would have Mike defeat his personal demons, embrace his life as a poker player, and then prove to Jo that he can have it all, winning the girl as well, but Rounders ends on a bittersweet note, showing that this relationship is probably beyond saving (not the least because Mike leaves town to go his Vegas and start up a real career as a poker player full time). Love was in the cards, but it wasn’t love for Jo. Mike chose poker in the end.

Oh yeah, spoilers for a 25 year old movie. I guess I should have said that earlier.

I have watched Rounders more times than I can count. It was one of the first movies I owned, grabbing a screener copy of the film from Blockbuster when I worked there (and the store was getting rid of a bunch of its tapes). That screener sat in my collection for years until I finally upgraded all my remaining VHS tapes, Rounders included. I’d pop it out every couple of years and watch it again, getting sucked into the world of underground poker with a character I really enjoyed and a story that didn’t hit the conventional beats. It was a good film even before poker became a big thing for a few years, the game that every smug douche-bro wanted to play.

Even now, after the poker craze faded, Rounders is still hailed as a solid movie. It hits many of the lists, from best movies of the 1990s to best films about gambling and best films from disgraced studios that no one wants to talk about anymore (Miramax). Popping the film in and watching it again, the movie feels oddly timeless. A hangout movie about a guy finding his passion again after too long away. For anyone that has seen the film before, getting back to it after years long gone, that feels very appropriate indeed.