Rounders
Cast: Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Paul Cicero, John Turturro, Gretchen Mol, Famke Janssen, John Malkovich, Martin Landau, Melina Kanakaredes, Goran Visnjic, etc.
Plot summary: A law school student loses his tuition money and everything else he has saved in a high stakes poker game. Learning his lesson (he thinks), he vows to his girlfriend to give up playing forever. That lasts until his best friend, a notorious card shark, is released from prison and drags him back into the circuit to pay debts he has incurred to a Russian mobster.
Trivia:
Rounders was set in New York City but all of the law school scenes were filmed in and around Rutgers Law School in Newark, NJ.
Worm was originally supposed to smoke but avid nonsmoker Edward Norton refused.
Matt Damon and Edward Norton played the $10,000 buy-in Texas Hold 'Em championship event at the 1998 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. During the first of four days, Matt Damon had pocket Kings and was knocked out by former world champion and poker legend Doyle Brunson who held pocket Aces.
John Turturro's character, Knish, was based on the unnamed character played by 'Michael Clapsadle' in 1997's "Casino's are coming to Detroit". Writer David Levien, had been in Livonia, Michigan during the shooting of the movie and decided that he wanted to expand on the character.
On the DVD commentary it's revealed that Edward Norton ad libbed a number of Worm's lines. Among them was, "She crossed her legs too fast," which is a quote from Chinatown (1974).
Early on, Mike is seen taking money out of a poker book called "Super Systems", which was written by poker legend Doyle Brunsen. He later pulls quotes from the book with the lines "Texas Hold 'em is the Cadillac of poker games" and "The trick to no limit is to put a man to a decision for all his chips."
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Another movie I'm looking forward to owning on DVD. I've seen it several times and just can't change the channel when it comes on. Good cast and story. Several memorable scenes and quotes.
Tetris Champion!
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