Poker Night Movie Launches

Sunday December 21,2014 : ‘POKER NIGHT' MOVIE LAUNCHED
 
But negative reviews accompany Los Angeles first screening.
 
The horror-violence movie "Poker Night" launched to rather negative reviews in Los Angeles this week, following availability on VOD and iTunes earlier this month.
 
Set in small-town Warsaw, Ind., but filmed in British Columbia, the movie is about a young cop who is invited to join a poker evening group comprising a selection of older police colleagues. During the games they tell the cop about their street experiences, with flashbacks to murders and other violence.
 
After one evening session the youngster attends a domestic dispute case where he is tasered and regains consciousness three days later, a prisoner in a basement along with another policeman's daughter. The two try to escape their masked jailer (who also suffers memory flashbacks) as the poker night flashbacks continue…we'll avoid spoiling the end.
 
The Variety review noted the film's "Pulp Fiction-esque structure" and observed:
 
"The cops’ tiresome bullish bravado, the multiple voiceover narrators, the incessant reversals of fortune and especially those endless flashbacks within flashbacks create a sense of overload that’s meant to be giddily outre, but grows empty and wearying instead. As a result, there’s little genuine suspense, and the sometimes-sadistic violence is scarcely rendered more effective by the uneven bad-taste humor with which it’s treated. After a while, it’s hard to care where things are headed."