The Card Player - Deadly Poker Games
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Card Player - Deadly Poker Games |
| Original title | Il cartaio |
| Country of production | Italy |
| original language | Italian |
| Publishing year | 2004 |
| length | 103 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Dario Argento |
| script | Dario Argento Franco Ferrini |
| production | Dario and Claudio Argento |
| music | Claudio Simonetti |
| camera | Benoît Debie |
| cut | Walter Fasano |
| occupation | |
| |
The Card Player - Deadly Poker Games (Original title: Il cartaio ) is an Italian Giallo thriller from 2004.
action
The Roman policewoman Anna Mari receives an e-mail in which she a stranger to online poker challenge game. The mission is the life of a kidnapped British tourist. If the stranger wins, he kills them. To make his demand clear, he transmits the image of his victim with a webcam . Anna's boss rejects such a game. Thereupon the young British woman dies. John Brennan, a former policeman from the homeland of the dead, who now works for the embassy, learns of the murder and takes on the case together with Anna.
A short time later, the murderer reports with a new victim. This time the police get involved in the game of poker. Anna's colleague Carlo Sturni loses, however, and the second girl also dies. The computer experts try in vain to trace the perpetrator on the Internet, and John examines the videos for clues about the whereabouts of the murderer. When he signs up for a third game, Anna and John have just discovered the youngster Remo in a gambling hall , who plays poker very successfully. You sign him for the next game. When Remo has just won the first round, the girl frees herself, but is killed anyway.
John and Anna get closer. She tells him that her father was a gambler before he committed suicide. When Anna is home alone again, the perpetrator assaults her, but escapes undetected. Shortly afterwards the situation comes to a dramatic head when the police chief learns that the next poker game will be about his daughter Lucia. However, this time Remo is successful and Lucia is actually released. But then the murderer kills Remo when he follows an attractive woman through the city.
A cannon that he heard in the background during a video provides John with the information that the video was not live but was recorded three hours earlier. When John has found the hiding place of the perpetrator, he runs into a trap and is impaled. Anna gets in the car with her colleague Carlo to drive to the crime scene. But from the plant seeds that were stuck in the corpses and can now be seen on the back seat, she suddenly realizes that she is sitting next to the murderer. Carlo handcuffed her and himself to railroad tracks and started the last round of poker on his laptop. Anna remembers a hint from her father's textbook and surprises him with a sudden scuffle. She gets the key and is able to free herself while Carlo is run over by the train.
production
The shooting took place in March to May 2003. Originally, Argento, who had previously celebrated a success with Nonhosonno, wanted to shoot the film Occhiali Neri in collaboration with producers from Hong Kong at the time, but the plan failed due to the bankruptcy of the production company. Instead, he developed the film The Card Player using an old script , which was to tie in with his work The Stendhal Syndrome . His daughter Asia Argento was scheduled for the lead role again, but preferred to film in Hollywood . Instead, Argento's older daughter Fiore and his nephew Nilo were in the cast.
Reviews
With Sense of View, Carsten Henkelmann emphasizes “the very sober, almost cold atmosphere that pervades the film. [...] You feel a little at a distance and the film takes a relatively long time until a little tension sets in. "
Awards
The film was nominated in 2004 for the Italian film award Nastro d'Argento des Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani (Category: Best Production Design).
Web links
- The Card Player - Deadly poker games in the Internet Movie Database (English)