Tag Archives: Gambling

CAPSULE: SAINT JOHN OF LAS VEGAS (2009)

DIRECTED BY:  Hue Rhodes

FEATURING: Steve Buscemi, Romany Malco, Sarah Silverman,

PLOT: An insurance fraud investigator with a secret gambling addiction is assigned to investigate a wheelchair-bound stripper’s accident claim in Las Vegas.

Still from Saint John of Las Vegas (2009)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LISTSaint John lands the dreaded double whammy: it’s not very weird, and not that good.

COMMENTS:  In blackjack, a player sometimes gets a decent hand but pushes his luck, takes another hit and end up going bust.  Saint John of Las Vegas starts with good cards: quirky indie icon Steve Buscemi, a plot hook about fate leading a problem gambler to the worst place in the world for him, and good supporting performances by Sarah Silverman as the new girlfriend whose sunniness and clinginess besmirch her sexiness and Peter Dinklage as the smarmy, fast-talking boss.  There are a couple of nearly brilliant, ironically absurd individual ideas: a wheelchair lapdance and a carnival sideshow attraction trapped in a malfunctioning flame suit.  But every good scene is undone by at least two corresponding clunkers: sleepyheads un-comically freaking out when awakened by the glare from a nearby glass building, a sequence involving a clique of nude men in the desert that works too hard for its single joke, a slowly revealed recurring dream that explains nothing, and a nonsensical, bungled twist ending that explains even less.  Apprentice fraud investigator Buscemi hits the road with vet adjuster Malco, an unflappable, cocky black dude whose too-cool-for-school glare gets him past strip club bouncers without paying the cover.  The mismatched pair never develop a chemistry to drive the movie; though he’s just doing what the script tells him to, Malco remains more of a constant annoyance than a worthy antagonist for Buscemi.   The final card that makes the movie go bust, however, is the half-hearted attempt to base the story on Dante’s “Inferno.”  English majors’ ears will perk up when they hear that Buscemi’s guide to the City of Sin is named Virgil, but anyone hoping to pick out correspondences to the epic poem will be frustrated, and anyone not familiar with Dante will be confused by the digressions.  The script stretches for circles.  Lust works, but where’s gluttony, who are the naked guys supposed to represent, and is there a new mortal sin—nicotine addiction—sandwiched somewhere in between wrath and heresy?  Writer/director Rhodes prominently gives Dante Alighieri a “based on a story by” credit, which is borderline unethical; the guy’s been dead for almost 700 years, so he’s not likely to have his agent call to get his name taken off the credits.  Still, with all its script problems and its chronic lack of laughs, Buscemi’s shaggy charisma keeps the project from being a total waste.  The rat-faced actor was born to play strung-out losers seeking redemption; a middle-aged desk-slave addicted to scratch off lottery cards is a role he can’t completely whiff on.

First time feature writer/director Hue Rhodes, who made a mid-life career change from software engineer to filmmaker, obviously charmed a lot of people into believing in him.   Not only did he lure Buscemi on board, but Spike Lee and Stanley Tucci show up in the credits as executive producers.  Their confidence wasn’t completely misplaced, as Rhodes does prove competent: although Saint John‘s parts don’t fit together into a bigger picture, the individual pieces are technically polished, making for a salable trailer.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…Rhodes buries his would-be comic tale of desert losers in a welter of quirkiness and lousy surrealism, largely wasting an alluring cast brimming with humorous potential.”–David Noh, Film Journal International (contemporaneous)

CAPSULE: INTACTO (2001)

AKA Intact

DIRECTED BY: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

FEATURING: Leonardo Sbaraglia, , Mónica López, Max von Sydow

PLOT:  In a world where the power of luck is real and spread unequally, fortune’s favorites square off against each other in a series of secret tournaments, sometimes for mortal stakes.

Still from Intacto (2001)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  A weird kernel of an idea at the center of a movie can’t qualify it for the List of the 366 best weird movies of all time, without more. Intacto gives us a little bit more, in the form of the bizarre and unnerving rituals engaged in by luck’s elite, but although it’s a strange ride, it’s not enough.

COMMENTS: Intacto starts from a magical realist premise: an individual’s luck is not random, but quantifiable, like a red blood cell count. Some people have more of it than others, and it can be stolen, and traded. With that as the “what if?” starting point, first time director Fresnadillo constructs a strange world where the lucky carry grudges, face each other in underground tournaments, and use luck as a weapon. Structured as an arty dramatic thriller, the main fun to be had in Intacto comes from watching Fresnadillo slowly reveal the rules the fortunate play by. Particularly intriguing are the secretive games of chance the charmed set up to test their skills against one another; going far beyond five-card draw or craps, the matches are all highly artificial and ritualistic, with the rules not disclosed to the viewer beforehand, lending them a sense of mysterious gravity. The best and weirdest has a glowing green katydid selecting a champion by alighting on the molasses-smeared head of the luckiest blindfolded contestant in a darkened room in a casino basement. There’s a weirdish thrill to these mysterious bouts, but the rest of the thriller plot is not so thrilling. There are two converging plotlines. The primary strand features Federico, a former Chosen One who’s been robbed of his luck, seeking a disciple to square off against “the Jew” (a grave and typically impressive Max von Sydow), the lone survivor of a holocaust concentration camp and the reigning God of Chance. He finds one in Tomas, a bank robber and survivor of a plane crash. The secondary plot features Sara, a scarred female detective herself chosen by fortune, who seeks to bring Tomas to justice. The way the dual storylines play out in the climax is satisfying enough, but don’t expect any startling twists or heart-racing moments.

The major downside is that the film, thematically a metaphor about survivor guilt that’s difficult for the average person to connect with emotionally, is relentlessly downbeat and gloomy. Moody Tomas, backed by a morose Federico and hunted by glum female detective, squares off against the haunted Jew. Between the four of them, they can hardly manage to crack one joke or smile to lighten the mood. Intacto’s themes are weighty, but it also seems that director Fresnadillo is also convinced that an oppressive atmosphere is necessary to make an Important Film.

An inversion of Fresnadillo’s scenario can be found in 2003’s less effective and less weird The Cooler, starring William H. Macy as a mope who’s so ill-starred that a Las Vegas casino hires him to drain away the luck of roulette players and slot-jockeys.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Elegant and lucid, and inflected with its own weird species of drollery, Intacto is a cerebral occult thriller from first-time Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, unfolding like a dangerously tricky puzzle, teasing and provoking.”–Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (contemporaneous)