Poker Face: Neon NZ Movie Review

Cast: Russell Crowe, RZA, Liam Hemsworth, Brooke Satchwell, Elsa Pataky
Director: Russell Crowe

Poker Face has massive potential - even if its premise is all too familiar.

The idea of a group of friends coming together one more time has been mined by the cinema for time immemorial.

Whether it's Peter's Friends or The Big Chill, it's a genre that's proffered up plenty.

Add into this mix a touch of Panic Room from Gladiator's Russell Crowe and it feels like it could be something genuinely tantalising.

But Poker Face is saddled with a lack of decent dialogue, a mournful tone that's stifling and a resolution that's all too quickly dispatched.

Crowe is Jake, the head of a group of five friends who one night calls them all back for a game of poker and a get together for mysterious reasons unknown.

Lavishing his mates with millions of dollars' worth of chips, and then poisoning them, the stakes are indeed high, and the mystery deliciously tempting.

However, things spiral when Jake's getaway is broken in to by a man looking for money and revenge...

Poker Face spends an inordinate amount of time setting things up.

The end result is that nothing really gets going until around the 1hour mark of the film - and it's only 85 minutes long.

While Crowe does reflective and elegaic well, his supporting group of friends are reduced to once-over-lightly characters that get more background in a sun-tinged flashback that feels like it's from Stand By Me.

Lumpen dialogue mixed with some clanging moments don't help proceedings either and pretty soon you feel like Poker Face has squandered its potential.

It may be a reasonable choice for a background streaming service, but in truth, the greatest bluff of Poker Face is that it's masquerading as a high-concept thriller.