56 - "Rounders" (1998)

     In the early 2000's, poker had a resurgence in popularity due to ESPN showing the World Series of Poker on it's networks. It seemed for a few years there, everyone and their grandmothers were playing poker. I even got involved in a few games here and there. But I wasn't new to the game as a lot of people were during that time. I had played for years with friends just for fun, or penny poker at the most. So in 1998, when I heard about this movie Rounders coming out, and it was about poker, I was all in (pun fully intended). Rounders stars arguably the two best young actors in Hollywood at that time, Matt Damon and Edward Norton. Damon is Mike McDermott, a law student who was a former poker player who lost everything to an underground crime boss named Teddy KGB (John Malkovich). He has backed away from the game with the help of his girlfriend and hopes to be a lawyer one day. When his best friend Worm (Norton) is released from prison, Mike finds himself being pulled back towards the game by Worm. At one time, these two were pros at working together to fix games in their favor. Mike is hesitant because he knows what happened in his past, but Worm owes a lot of money to some dangerous people and Mike knows he has the ability to help his friend out. The movie eventually becomes a race against time and will lead to Mike facing a lot of enemies from his past. Rounders is a superb little film that flew under the radar at first but picked up a cult following when the poker boom hit. Damon and Norton are nothing short of fantastic and the script is very well written providing great dialogue for the two. This is a movie you can enjoy even if you don't know a lot about poker. It certainly helps, but it's not a necessity. If you want to see two of Hollywood's finest at the top of their games, Rounders is your movie.