The Card Player
(Il Cartaio, 2004)

Dario Argento

Italy

103 min, color, English

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

I had nearly written off Argento after the abominable Phantom of the Opera, but then he suddenly returned to his roots with the stylish and eminently good Sleepless. My hopes went up again; after all, it would appear the maestro had not lost his touch. And now comes this... I am crushed. Whereas The Card Player is not a very bad film, it is an astonishingly soulless outing for someone of Argento's caliber. It looks and feels like a long episode of CSI without any of the slick performances. In an effort to be up to date and seem cool to a TV-bound audience, Argento has ditched his entire style for a new look. What a disaster.

The modern policewoman	Decidedly user-unfriendly interface

On one hand, the premise is mildly entertaining in a way that could sustain moderate suspense in a 60-minute episode with 15 minutes for commercial breaks. Some guy kidnaps girls and then challenges the police to an online game of poker. They will play three out of five games and if the police wins, he will let the girl go, otherwise he will kill her. For any game the police loses, the girl loses something. To make matters even more unnerving, he feeds live video to the police console so that can see in excruciating lack of detail just how someone they have sworn to protect suffers from their inability to manipulate electrons in cyberspace.

Bad for tourism	The deliriously funny singing pathologist

If nothing else, the setting is worthy of a film made in the last 20 years even if some of the particulars seem to have escaped Argento. For example, the police recruits a young man by the name of Remo (Silvio Muccino) to help them win because he apparently has the golden touch and wins a lot of these computer-based games of chance. The only problem is that with computer-based games of chance, his luck is as good as the next guy's because the random number generator does not give a rat's ass about who's punching the keys. But I will let this one slide.

The first game of police and killer	Hey, is this thing supposed to be in the trachea?

As usual for Argento, there's at least one detective with some, um, unusual characteristics. This time it is Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) who should not be confused with Anna Manni from The Stendhal Syndrome who went irretrievably nutty by the end of that (superior) thriller. No, this one appears quite stable and seems as competent as a policewoman working for Rome's PD can be. (Of course, it does not hurt one bit that she's pretty, well at least not in the beginning.) Her problem is that as strong, professional and detached she appears on the outside, as lonely, vulnerable and afraid of commitment she is on the inside. I know it's not much of a deviant trait, but hey, it's something. Unfortunately, it never goes anywhere.

Our relationship is strictly professional	Dumb luck versus random number generator

She is courted by a fellow officer of the law by the name of Carlo (Claudio Santamaria) who embarrasses her, himself, and the florist by bringing her flowers to work instead of a ham sandwich. The bagel boy can do better than that. And no, Anna is not of, um, alternative sexual persuasion, as her quick jump into the proverbial sack with British cop-on-the-loan attests (unless it was all a cunning ploy to establish intimate diplomatic relations with the London PD). Said cop, by the way, is played by the perennially intense Liam Cunningham who I will remember forever from his equally intense (but much more villainous) role in Dog Soldiers. He's here because the first vic was a British tourist and because he's a loose cannon, or at the very least, a loose cap on his personal flask.

If that's a strictly professional relationship, I want to be in this profession	Gratuitous shot of an armed Stefania Rocca

I guess it's important that Anna beds him because this may seem to resolve at least some of the personal "issues" she is having, but she nearly gets herself whacked because she refuses to either let him sleep in or stay at his place, which admittedly isn't much being a hotel room and all. Meanwhile, the card player wins a disturbingly large number of games, which threatens to reach three. To make mattes worse, Argento insists on showing us the same scene over and over again with slight variations just to make it look slightly off. I do not know just how riveted I was supposed to be to the computer screen (in ugly green, mind you), the flashing cards, and the breathless cops crowding the terminal, but I was about as involved as when my wife prates on about shopping.

It only takes an ample bosom..	...and he is hooked

Things heat up (no pun intended) when the ample bosom of Conchita Puglisi distracts Remo in a bar. Unfortunately, they cool down rather quickly even though one has to wonder about a guy of Remo's nerdish stature; I would have been suspicious with a woman like that talking to me if I looked like him, and would have been clicking my heels doing the about face once I saw she was leading me down some streets whose lights did not appear to be all that well maintained. But that's just me. Maybe that's why I have never gotten laid by a woman I met in a bar. But then I have never gotten shot at either. Or fished out the water with a hook.

Not my idea of hiking in the park	Ma'am, you need to RELAX!

The only somewhat interesting twist occurs at the very end when the killer chains himself and Anna to a railroad track so that they can play the ultimate game: whoever wins gets the key and can escape a gruesome fate under the train. I swallowed hard when I realized the laptop was running on its battery but then I realized this was not where the suspense was supposed to come from. I don't know just how many viewers Argento thinks are poker players but I am not, so whatever was happening on the laptop's screen was meaningless to me. I wonder just how many people he lost with that... now, if they played Minesweeper, I would have been all over it. I guess what happens in the end is somewhat disturbing because Anna makes lots of faces and noises, so I guess the guy actually won but she managed to psych him out and unnerve him enough to close the lid without waiting for the official notification from the game (which was inexplicably delayed just this once). Not that it makes a difference. And the happy ending with Anna's pregnancy was the real stinker anyway.

On the wrong side of the track	Apple beats Windows any day, you shrimp!

If you really must get this atrocious film which may well get Argento hired out by CBS, you can get in on a DVD from Anchor Bay. The release is pretty decent and the film looks as slick as it's supposed to in its sparkling anamorphic transfer at the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Dolby Digital 5.1 and stereo soundtracks are included, both in English. No subtitles. The first, and visibly exasperating "extra" is the forced playing of previews for other Argento films released by Anchor Bay. I did not bother with the feature-length commentary, but did take a look at the other extras. "Playing with Death" is a 13-minute spiel by Argento about how good his actors were (some were, others were most certainly pathetic), which is about as interesting as going through junk mail. A 17-minute short about Simonetti actually kicks it up a bit although the composer lost all credibility when he claimed that the electronic soundtrack to this film was his best work to date (what, the hell, was he smoking?) The 6-minute "Behind the Scenes" is totally worthless as well. Needless to say, this is one Argento film I will not own.

February 12, 2006