Poker In Cinema: The Big Blind
by Bodog Poker | Oct 12 2010
Released back just before the online poker explosion, The Big Blind was written and directed by David James, a semi-pro player who financed the film using his winnings at the poker tables. The ambitious low-budget film follows fifty different poker players attempting to find their way to the top and has a dozen intersecting plot lines that move towards a championship.
Narrated by Darrin (voiced by Blake Adams,) the first act of the film effectively introduces the audience to the cast and gives us brief glimpses of each of them and why they play. From Scotty's (poker pro Scotty Nguyen) avarice to Queen Mama's search for fame, each player has different motive for getting to the top. A lot of the action centers around Lane (Matt Corboy,) one of the stronger players featured, and his relationship with his sister Kath (played by poker pro Jennifer Harman), who owes a debt to the mob. Their sibling rivalry and how poker affects their relationship could actually be used in its own film, and while Harman is no Meryl Streep, she shows acting chops that are fairly strong, likely because they're part of her native poker arsenal.
Hand after hand of Texas Hold ‘Em is shown and the movie does a fine job depicting the game, even as it livens up the action a bit. One memorable gag featuring a player wanting to win a bad beat bonus and a pro wanting to divest him of his chips is actually pretty hilarious, and there's a lot of care taken to make sure that the game is presentd as authentically as possible.
That said, the movie is too ambitious when it comes to its characters and suffers for it. While Lane and Kath could form a strong pair of characters to center a film around, they get too little screen time to effectively make the viewer care. Same for the comedic couple of Sly and Queen Mama and Roger's backwards fall into the game. While it's possible to make a successful movie with such a large cast, it takes years of experience to get to the point where handling over four or five “main” characters is possible and James's chops are not there yet.
The movie's homepage - it's only available through the web as it never got distribution - features several juicy quotes from well-regarded poker pros and it's easy to see why so many poker players enjoy the movie: the action is handled well, and the sketches we get of many of the characters do ring true to life, but for film fans there's more than a few problematic areas. Queen Mama is a throwback to blaxploitation humor and feels very out of place and by giving short shrift to so many interesting characters, James seems to miss the boat. Yes, the poker action is very nicely captured and fans of the game are going to enjoy the game of “spot the allusion” that the script provides, but for most filmgoers, the poorly-shot and frequently badly-acted story will come across as wooden and graceless.
