Pokerface review films by and with Russell Crowe, Liam Hemsworth, RZA extension, Elsa Pataky, Aden Young, Steve Sticks, Daniel MacPherson, Brooke Satchwell, Molly Grace, Paul Tassone And Jack Thompson
There are emotionally engaging stories in the history of cinema. Stories that mix life, death, philosophy, art. Stories that convey an intertextual script made up of (meta)physical, scientific and sentimental supports based on the value of friendship and love. There are stories that in pauca verba they tell through moving images without other signifiers. And there are stories without a logical sense that slide into the abyss of the semantic unknown, interspersed with frame edited in post-production which instead of elucidating confuse. Pokerface it is one of these stories.
The new film written, directed and performed by Russell Crowe as the 57-year-old poker player Jake Foley, presented at the seventeenth Rome Film Fest. A boy with primarily the passion for gambling that over the years turns into precious ambition. Precious as his luxurious home, his very expensive sports cars, his very personal and millionaire art gallery that shines on the white walls, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe pigeonholed like a puzzle on the finely painted wall and the painting by Paul Cézanne which is worth 200 million hanging in the center of the kitchen, the object of a few too many rifle shots. The card players that picture, which (post-)impresses the shady trio who came to rob the majestic villa to make good money.
Pokerface it is a film that does not clarify anything. Suspended halfway between psycho-philosophical spirituality internalized by a shaman who seems to know a thing or two about Freud and the sense of (self) affliction of a guilt that has defied Foley to Texas Hold’em in the hardest game he has never won: the game with death. And so, the metaphor of a lot of money that fails to make a man who has everything happy, the strong friendship that binds a group of teenagers who have taken different paths growing up, the love for his daughter, the accident of his wife who blizzard and the lethal pancreatic tumor that devours him from the inside, they are unable to find their dimension capable of being able to give meaning to the thriller that the legendary Crowe he staged.
And we find ourselves floating on the waves of narrative emptiness, without touching the true profound meaning of the film, which looks more like a sketch than a real finished film. An idea cherished without ever touching the soul, with only paintings that can warm a cold heart. As if there were many tableaux vivants that embellish the beautiful shots built on close-ups and very close-ups ‒ the very close-up on the blue eyes of Russell Crowe hardly forgotten ‒ together with the astonishing hair and make-up that has aged the charming Liam Hemsworth as one of the best friends, Michael Nankervis.
Pokerface appears a laborious (literally) labor of Russell Crowe which assembles scenes from The card collector (2021) by Paul Schrader to converge them in a mixture of elements from love story, friendship story, mystery thriller, a refined mysticism with some philosophical tip to Terrence Malick that never take a single direction. Gladiator tip All In on the cinema table leaving everything half done. But one thing has found his fixed point: eight years after the release of his first film as a director The Water Diviner (2014), Russell Crowe has lost his most dangerous challenge and the Poker face remained indecipherable.
Poker Face movie review Russell Crowe, Liam Hemsworth and RZA