Movies You Gotta See: They just don’t make ‘em like ‘Rounders’ anymore

Some of my favorite movies are about different worlds. I don’t mean this in an Avatar or Star Trek sense; I’m talking about universes that exist alongside our own, completely unbeknownst to us.

Take the (incredibly awesome) John Wick franchise, for example. The Wick films take place in the criminal underworld of assassins, and they let us explore another realm of existence that’s carrying on right under our noses. The idea that people around us are leading drastically different lives than ours without us even knowing it is pretty intriguing, and movies that open our eyes to these universes are among the most fun to watch.

The 1998 drama Rounders, directed by John Dahl, gives us a glimpse into another fascinating underworld: one that revolves around high-stakes poker.

Rounders stars two of the 1990s’ rising young actors: Matt Damon and Edward Norton. Damon had just taken home an Oscar for co-writing Good Will Hunting with Ben Affleck a few months before Rounders’ release, and Norton had broken onto the scene with an unforgettable performance in 1996’s Primal Fear, which earned him an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor. Damon and Norton would each eventually star in several massive and culturally-impactful films over the next decade (Saving Private Ryan and the Ocean’s and Bourne series for Damon; American History X and Fight Club for Norton) before going on to be two of the most beloved and respected actors of their generation, and Rounders catches both of them right before their respective peaks.

In Rounders, Damon plays Mike McDermott, a New York City law student who makes money on the side by playing underground poker. Mike’s a small-timer, but he’s got the skills and ambition to be one of the best. At the beginning of the film, he’s got his eyes on a World Series of Poker win somewhere down the line. Mike buys into a no-limit Texas hold ‘em game run by Russian mobster Teddy KGB (John Malkovich doing what can best be described as “an accent, all right”). Mike ends up putting his entire $30,000.00 bankroll in play on one hand against Teddy and loses it all. The loss is both financially and emotionally devastating for Mike, and he vows to walk away from cards for good and focus solely on getting his law degree. His mentor, legendary “rounder” (full-time poker player) Joey Kanish (the great John Turturro), offers to stake Mike to help get him back on his feet, but Mike declines. Nine months later, Mike’s driving a delivery truck part-time to make ends meet. It’s a job, as Mike describes it, that’s handed down from Kanish to rounders who forget the cardinal rule: always leave yourself outs.

There’s a specific type of movie out there I like to call “jargon movies,” and they’re oftentimes underworld movie-adjacent. In sports films like Moneyball, or finance world films like The Big Short, or military-focused films like Full Metal Jacket, the subject matter is usually pretty intricate and occasionally downright confusing, meaning at times, the majority of the audience might not have any idea what anyone is talking about because the characters are using hyper-specific terminology – hence the “jargon” moniker. As both an underworld movie and a jargon movie, Rounders has a leg up in forging a deeper connection with the viewer. Mike serves as the film’s narrator, cluing us in on not only the ins-and-outs of poker, but the realm surrounding the game – its norms, its players, its social and class structures. Mike’s insight helps us better understand this universe and Mike as a person and poker player. In the fantastic opening scene, Mike’s painfully honest, describing in detail his thought process at the table and what ultimately led to him going bust. Rounders deftly executes what any good jargon film does: it makes an otherwise niche subject not only accessible to the general public, but genuinely interesting. In Rounders’ case, it’s all but intoxicating.

They key to jargon movies, in my opinion, is to grab the viewer’s attention from the jump, because if you don’t, they can easily be bored or confused into giving up on the movie. The opening scene of Rounders is a master class in setting the hooks in the audience early, and the film keeps us on the line by shortly thereafter introducing us to Worm (Norton, who’s dizzyingly great in Sleazeball Mode here). Worm is Mike’s best pal, and the two go way back – they’ve been playing cards and running all sorts of scams together since their school days. Mike picks Worm up after he’s released from prison for distributing stolen credit cards, and Worm’s crestfallen to hear that Mike lost it all and packed it in. Whereas Mike always played poker straight-up, Worm hustles and cheats his way to wins – something he’s both excellent at and proud of. Worm’s dishonesty has gotten him into more than one jam in his life, but Mike has always had his back, and Worm’s always had his. In school, Worm took the fall for a grift that both he and Mike were involved in, and he got expelled for it. Everyone has had a friend like Worm: A pain in the neck, but loyal and charming enough to always be forgiven.

Before Worm went to jail, he owed a pretty substantial gambling debt, and now that he’s out, it’s time to pay up. Mike lets Worm play on his credit at a local club to help him start working towards getting back in the black, but Worm ends up running a pretty big tab in Mike’s name. Worm also finds out that local pimp Grama (Michael Rispoli) had bought up all of his debt while he was incarcerated. Grama’s backed by Teddy KGB, meaning that if Worm and Mike don’t pony up, they’re in the worst kind of trouble with the worst kind of people. With Mike and Worm owing $15,000.00 to Grama in five days, Mike dives headfirst back into poker, going on a marathon session of games to try to win enough money to get them in the clear. The saga culminates with a superb one-on-one showdown between Mike and KGB, where Mike is literally playing for his life.

Someone watching Rounders for the first time might not necessarily buy into the idea that Mike is a prodigious poker player. I mean, sure, he cleans up some games while he’s trying to square the Grama/Teddy KGB debt, but overall, it might’ve seemed like poor judgment, or even hubris, the led him to bet his whole bankroll against the Mad Russian. But in a tremendous and pivotal scene with Kanish, Mike reveals his secret: there was a reason he went all-in, and it puts Mike’s fateful decision that night into perspective.

Folks, they simply do not make ‘em like Rounders anymore. Okay, that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, but compared to decades past, such movies are much rarer. Smaller-budget, made-by-adults-for-adults dramas and thrillers with a few A- or B-listers, a solid supporting cast, and a fresh script have largely gone by the wayside in favor of colossal-budget movies based on intellectual property (IP) owned by major studios – your Marvels, DCs, and Star Wars of the world. Don’t get me wrong, I like those movies, too, but their popularity has come at a cost. Films based on IP have had the film industry in a chokehold for the better part of the last 20 years, and the loss of physical media, like DVDs and Blu-Rays, due largely to the popularity of streaming has meant theater releases are where studios need to make their money now. These factors mean studios don’t often fund several lower-budget movies that might combine for a meager profit when sales of physical media are factored in later. Instead, they’re more apt to dump huge sums of money into single projects hoping for a return in-kind at the box office. Think the two most recent Avengers movies: they had staggering budgets, but they’re two of the most financially-successful movies ever made, meaning Disney had a pair of massive paydays off just two films. This, by and large, is the modern mainstream movie-making formula.

Damon and Norton cut their teeth and made their names on films like Rounders; now, you’re lucky to see half a dozen similar movies released theatrically a year. But what a lot of those IP movies largely lack, Rounders has in spades. The world of Rounders is dripping with swagger, brought about by an assortment of unique and interesting characters delivering lines of cool, slick dialogue peppered with in-the-world lingo. It’s the kind of stuff you won’t often find in huge franchises, and it’s what Hollywood is sorely missing.

Jalen’s columns, “Movies You Gotta See” and “The Free Play,” can be found online at www.medium.com/@jalenmaki. 

Follow Jalen on Letterboxd at www.letterboxd.com/jalenmaki182/ to see what he’s been watching.