POKER FACE

Australia, 2022, 94 minutes, Colour.

Russell Crowe, Liam Hemsworth, RZA Aden Young, Steve Bastoni, Daniel MacPherson, Brooks Satchwell, Paul Tassone, Matt Nable, Benedict Hardie, Molly Grace, Elsa Pataki, Jack Thompson, Jacqueline McKenzie.

Directed by Russell Crowe.

While there are some poker games in this film, the emphasis from the title should be more on the face, the poker face, rather than the games. Many of the adverse comments indicated that these audiences wanted to see card games and skills and missed the point of the film.

The film had some initial difficulties in production, losing its directir, Russell Crowe deciding to step in, and working on the original screenplay as well as taking on the central role.

The story is unusual, ending up as something of a morality tale.

In the prologue, we see a group of young boys, able to play poker, friends, at a waterfall with swimming hole, taking bets, winning, and protecting themselves from the older boys. Then the action moves to 40 years or so into the future, Jake, Russell Crowe, rather portly, a successful businessman with exploiting his poker skills for surveillance techniques, with a daughter, with a wife who is having an affair, but visiting the doctor and getting a diagnosis that he was to die.

He visits a guru his name is Shaman, and is played by Jack Thompson, listening to Jake, responding with words of wisdom, but also the possibility of drugs, even for pain and ending one’s life.

He invites his friends from the past to a poker game at his mansion. However, his aim is to challenge them, them to acknowledge the wrongs in their life, find an opportunity to rectify the wrongs – and he wants to achieve this before he dies.

There is a dramatic complication in so far as Jake has been an art collector (and a great number of authentic Australian paintings being lent to the production and many filmed in close-up). The older brother, memories of the aggressive past, has become a criminal and wants to steal some paintings and brings along an art expert. This provides for a great deal of melodrama – Jake able to conceal his friends in a kind of panic room, then able to make threats to the intruders. And, it is complicated by the arrival of his anxious daughter along with his ex-wife.

There is some complicated action, not helped by a rather over-the-top performance by Paul Tassone as the older brother, balanced by Benedict Hardie as the sometimes gloating art expert.

Jake has told his friends that he has poisoned them – but not fatally, the syrubge is actually used for the aggressive brother.

Aden Young plays a novelist who is having an affair with Jake’s wife. Steve Bastoni plays a politician who has become entangled with corruption and blackmail. Liam Hemsworth has become alcoholic and drug -dependent (and everybody comments that he looks far too young – and is – for this role). So, before he dies, Jake arranges that each of them puts his life in order.

Not quite what the audience was expecting, some audiences certainly not caught up in it, others intrigued.

1. The title, the emphasis on the face rather than on the game of poker? Audience responses expecting poker games and not understanding poker face?
2. Russell Crowe film, writer, director, actor?
3. The settings, the New South Wales countryside, the City of Sydney and vistas, the luxury apartment, the country mansion, interiors? The musical score?
4. The prologue, Jake and his friends, swimming, jumping into the water, playing poker, poker face, winnings, the boy asking for prescription money, the older boys coming on bullying, taking the money, jumping into the water and escaping?
5. The transition to the present, Jake, 57, his achievements, the narration about poker games, methods and tactics, the building up of the company, sales, military interest? Millionaires? Jake and his marriage, tensions with his wife, the vasectomy, his love for his daughter?
6. The visit to the guru, the reflections on mortality, on his life, the questions by the guru, taking time, peacefulness, thinking, mindfulness? The gift of the syringe and the doses? Jake taking them, keeping them safe?
7. The discussions with the lawyer, Jake and his health, mortality, the information about pancreatic cancer, short time to live?
8. His concern about his daughter, her reaction to his dying?
9. Gathering the friends for the poker game, his explanations, the odds, taking the cards, or not? The challenge?
10. The friends, memories of the past, their reminiscing, Paul and his being in politics, confident, the revelation about his affair, being blackmailed, by his older brother? Alex, writer, the affair with Jake’s wife? Mike, addiction, the gun, to take his own life?
11. The game, the consequences, Jake and his concern about his friends, despite their behaviour? The revelation about the poison, their reactions, sharing the death experience? Jake explaining that the dose was light?
12. The ex-wife and the daughter, driving to the mansion?
13. Drew, partner, his arrival, participating in the confrontation with the home invaders?
14. Victor, his colleagues, the art expert, the man with the code, death at the gate? Home invasion? The intention of stealing the art? The range of paintings, their being identified, Australian paintings?
15. Jake, his surveillance system, the friends or disappearing behind the door? Victor, abrupt, greedy, the art expert, the thuggish behaviour of the partner? The women arriving, the confrontation, tying them up?
16. Jake, his decision to come out, the gun, only one bullet, confronting Victor, the story of the poison, Victor’s apprehension, nerves, memories of the past? The gun? Jake and his injection, Victor injecting himself, lethal, going into the garden, death?
17. The friends, in the upper room, the expert and the thug coming to at the painting, the fight and overcoming them?
18. The morality play, Jake and his wishing well to everyone, forgiving, his death? The reading of the will? Paul to get out of politics, Alex to marry Jake’s ex-wife, Mike to go into rehabilitation? His daughter and her inheritance? Drew and his being the manager?