Ironically, the film’s vocabulary of flops, rivers, and turns would have landed more with audiences if the film had arrived a decade later.ĭamon was unbelievably young here, still wearing hair similar to how he did as Will Hunting, although it’s Norton who walks away with the movie as a very believable scumbag. Numerous perennials of the poker scene in those years have said they got into the game due to the movie. But in the few years after that, it became a foundational text during the poker craze of the early aughts. The film, in its initial release, was something of a flop, making just $8.5 million in its opening weekend and $22.9 million overall. Stephen Silver Rounders was an Initial Flop The poker scenes are so well done that Gene Siskel, a noted poker player in his own right, stated that “the poker and strategy is first rate.” Heavyweights John Turturro and Martin Landau play Damon’s respective mentors in the world of poker and law, and Landau gets a long monologue - about how he walked away from his family’s insistence he be a rabbi to be a lawyer instead - that recalls his great speech at the end of Crimes and Misdemeanors. The film’s deep cast is a virtue, also sporting the likes of Lenny Clarke, Chris Messina, Michael Rispoli, and David Arias. And Kevin Pollak said in an interview a few years ago that he was eager to appear on Billions in part because he’s a poker guy and he knew the two writers had credibility with the game. Both even featured Malkovich as a Russian guy.

This is set in a world of New York City money and testosterone that’s a little bit different than their future show, although both Rounders and Billions feature witty dialogue and a deep bench of talented character actors. John Dahl directed the film, which was written by David Koppelman and David Levien, the future co-creators of Billions.

Poker movie rounders