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How sad is this?

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

March 2015:With a poll coming up on IMDbs classic Film board for the best titles of 2004,I decided to watch auteur film maker Dario Argento's 2004 Giallo.Despite having recently gotten a brand new DVD player,the machine kept jamming up 20 minutes into the flick,which eventually led to me giving up on Dario's poker,and instead watching Eros Puglielli's tense 2004 Giallo Eyes of Crystals.July 2015:Since having recently picked up an cheap back-up DVD player, (which came with no remote,and only has a play/pause button!)I felt that it was the perfect time to go back to the table,to finally play a round with the card player.The plot:Arriving at the police station,officer Anna Mari receives an E-Mail containing a photo of a kidnapped girl,with a message from the kidnapper saying that he wants the police to play a game.As the cops try to make sense of what is taking place,an internet poker screen pops up,with the kidnapped victim being shown on the side in a web cam.Offering the victims freedom if the cops can win a 5 round game of poker,Mari is ordered by the Commissioner not to take part in this bluff,which leads to the stranger brutally killing the kidnapped victim.Fearing that a serial killer is on the loose,Mari begins to closely work with a sacked British police officer called John Brennan in building a profile of the killer,who is continuing to haunt the police by winning the deadly rounds of poker.Staying away from the table since her dad killed himself over his gambling debt,Mari decides that she must now take a seat at the table,in order to get the killer winning hand.View on the film:Originally planned as a sequel to The Stendhal Syndrome, (which got stopped when Asia Argento decided to leave Italy for Hollywood)the screenplay by co-writer/(along with Jay Benedict/Phoebe Scholfield & Franco Ferrini) directing auteur Dario Argento got dealt a number of bad hands which led to the ending being changed 3 times,and the cast largely improvising the dialogue.Despite everything being stacked against it,the writers are still able to deliver a gripping Giallo,with the dial-up internet (aww..the bad old days!) poker games create a tense atmosphere,as each turn of the cards switches the advantage between Mari & the killer.Whilst the more improvise nature sadly leads to the clues to the identity of the murderer mostly feeling like a last minute addition,the writers deliver aces high set pieces which strike an excellent techno-Giallo mood,which goes from the main clue allowing Argento to return to the theme of people being connected to nature,to a delightfully bonkers Silent movie-style railroad track final.Interestingly keeping lush colours solely shown in the garden of the killers secret location,Argento & cinematographer Benoît Debie attack the Giallo with a brittle Film Noir hue,by completely draining any colours and covering the title in a decaying grunge of greys and browns,which perfectly expresses the bleak disconnection that the cops have to the on-screen victims.Contrasting the tar-pit look of the movie,Argento slides across the poker table with rapid tracking shots kept in to the beat of Claudio Simonetti's electronic score,which along with allowing Argento to show ever corner of the burnt out city,also allows Dario to deliver ever twist in the cards with a real precision,as Mari tries to find the killers royal flush.

I would have given one out of ten but the idea for the film I thought was pretty good - so I gave it 2. I really couldn't see past the bad acting and dubbing - oh hell it is terrible. I'm still watching this film - I want to turn it off and watch something else but I also want to see how much worse this could get. Like I said; the story line idea is pretty good, the problem I have with it is that it was shown on the Horror channel so I recorded this thinking it would be a horror film. It's not, it's a thriller police chase thing. Which isn't the sort of thing I'm in to. If those are the types of films you like, and you can get past the terrible terrible acting and even worse dubbing, then by all means watch this film. If you are watching this thinking it will be a gruesome horror film; you are wrong, do not watch this film.

The Card Player is set in Rome in Italy where an English tourist has been kidnapped, detective Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) receives an e-mail from the kidnapper who calls himself the 'Card Player' in which he challenges the police to a game of online poker for the woman's life. If he winds the woman dies, if the police win she goes free. At first the police refuse to play but soon discover that the Crad Player isn't joking as they kill the woman & dump her body. English interpol agent detective John Brennan (Liam Cunningham) is brought in to work with Anna & track the killer down, however the killer strikes again & this time the police are forced to play the game of poker but with a persons life at stake the pressure is on...This Italian production called Il Cartaio in it's native country was co-written, produced & directed by cult filmmaker Dario Argento, this was Argento's seventeenth film & is maybe the worst one he has ever made & I would probably say it's the worst film from Argento that I have actually seen. There are several things that I disliked about The Crad Player, for a start if you are going into this after having only watched Argento's stylish horror thrillers from the 70's & 80's then you will struggle to believe the same guy wrote & directed this as it's just so un-Argento like. There are no elaborate set-pieces, there's no bizarre psychological motives or supernatural angle or even any real suspense or tension. The Card Player feels like an overlong made for telly crime drama full of plot holes, the big twist which I saw coming is quite literally impossible when you think about it. There is no way on Earth that the killer could have prerecorded the killings & the game of virtual poker, there's no way the killer would have known how long the police would take to make their moves or what cards they held or that they were going to refuse to play the first game but then play the second. It's impossible unless the killer had a time machine or could see into the future. Also at the start of the first poker game Anna & the killer talk to each over the internet in a chat-room, again how could the killer have done this if it was all prerecorded & they were somewhere else? Then there's the killers identity & motives, the killers identity doesn't make much difference as we never really know anything about them until they are revealed as the killer & it could have literally been anyone. Then when confronted at the end no motive is given for their actions, sure there's some nonsense about them loving Anna but so what? Why kill people & play online poker because of it? What were they hoping to achieve? What was the point? Then there's the head shaking moment at the end where the killer has Anna just where they want her handcuffed to a train track yet for some bizarre reason they then decide to handcuff themselves next to her & play a nice game of poker as a train approaches. Talk about stupid. Would a cold, calm, logical killer (who can see into the future) really handcuff themselves to a railway track with a train fast approaching? They would in The Card Player...At over 100 minutes this drags too, although there's a warmer central relationship between the two main character's than usual for an Argento film there's no heart here. One character is killed off unexpectedly but that's the only twist that works, otherwise The Card Player is fairly routine & without the usual Argento set-pieces & dazzling camera-work there's very little here to recommend. The gore is tame, there are a couple of dead decomposing bodies & someone gets impaled on some spikes but other than that nothing. I also found the online poker game really annoying, there's this crappy animation that it goes through every time someone changes a card or wins or whatever & that too drags the pace down as we see the same basic boring animated playing card graphic for the twentieth time.Filmed in Rome in Italy with a supposed budget of about two millions Euros this looks surprisingly flat & forgettable. The acting isn't that good either, a lot of the Italian actor's are speaking their lines in English & they just sound odd at times.The Crad Player is a film that I didn't like, unless someone had told me I would never have known Argento was behind this. I still say it's the worst film from him that I have seen & I've seen most of his output. Not good.

Lacking many of Argento's trademark stylish touches (strong coloured lighting, dizzying camera-work, a leather-gloved killer, and creepy dolls to name but a few), and possessing a story that actually makes some kind of sense (at least until the final few seconds.... but more about that later), The Card Player is certainly one of the director's least typical movies. Thus, it is also one of his least memorable, despite containing a few decent set pieces, some great prosthetics work from Sergio Stivaletti, and solid performances from the leads.Stefania Rocca plays a pretty Rome policewoman, Anna Mari, who is involved in a cat-and-mouse game with a serial killer whose modus-operandi is to kidnap women and use them as the stake in an online game of Poker against the police. For every hand that the police lose, the killer removes a body part from the victim; if the police lose the whole game, then the girl is killed; if the police win the game, then the girl is allowed to go free.With the help of Irish copper John Brennan (Liam Cunningham) and a young poker player named Remo (Silvio Muccino), Anna Mari eventually tracks down the psycho (described by the police expert as a 'risk-taking hedonist'), and is forced to play one final game—with her life as the wager.Although there are several strong moments in the film—the surprise death of a major character and a tense showdown between Anna and the killer in a darkened apartment being the best—The Card Player suffers from a couple of equally weak scenes which only serve to negate the power of the 'good bits'.And I'm still completely nonplussed about the very ending, in which Anna is told, via phone, that she is pregnant: it's just... so... odd!!! 6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.