Rating: R | Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: September 13th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Director(s): Luc Walpoth
Writer(s): Josh Wilcox

Where’s the money?

The players at Jack’s (David Keith) poker game are degenerate gamblers through and through. They mock him for betting on MMA undercards. Mock each other when their mouths appear to be cashing checks their wallets can’t afford. And any snippet of dialogue that might be construed as a bet suddenly becomes one complete with numerous offshoots to sweeten pots popping out of nowhere. If there’s action to be had, they will all put skin in the game. Until there’s no more money left to play.

That’s the inevitable end to the opening scene of Dead Money, written by Josh Wilcox and directed by Luc Walpoth. Amidst all the chaos of this illegal game, the one thing none of them can bet on is the fact that they’re all about to be robbed. Two hundred large when all is said and done. Big money, but not so big that these “friendly” players fear they might be losing limbs in the morning. Not even Andy (Emile Hirsch) seems too shaken despite needing the winnings he’d won, lost, and won again before the robbery. They take risks and live with the consequences.

Well, through a lucky break that soon spirals into a nightmare, Andy happens to find himself in possession of the cash Wendel (Jackie Earle Haley) and Lonnie (Rory Culkin) stole. Should he call LT (Peter Facinelli), Buck (Noah Segan), and the other guys to divvy the money back out and live to play again? Probably. But if he’s robbing the robbers and the assumption is that they can’t complain because it wasn’t theirs to begin with, why not just take it for himself? The reason is simple to us: desperate men do desperate things and there’s no guarantee Andy got away clean. To him, however, that cash has him feeling invincible.

And so the plot diverts. Andy goes on a heater to pay off debts and accrue more profits while his girlfriend Chloe (India Eisley) is scooped up as a hostage to get the stolen money back to those who originally stole it. The result is a violent yet humorous thriller wherein she’s playing her assailants in the hopes their greed gets them to kill each other and he’s hopping from game to game to add to his stack and, eventually, pay to get her back. Because the bad guys know he has the dough and they recognize just how great he’s winning. Why not let him keep going and gain a tidy profit on top?

Andy talks about math via voice-over, but this isn’t as much a poker movie as it is a darkly comic drama with poker in it. The suspense isn’t therefore built at the table, but by the guns being held to the temples of people off-screen. There’s a bit of intrigue once Andy gets to Faizel’s (Jimmy Jean-Louis) house due to an accusation of cheating, but even that’s low stakes since we know he must leave flush or the climax won’t have a chance to happen. Our worry is instead about who will still be alive by the time he confronts the thieves and tries to save Chloe. Then and only then must we wonder what happens next.

Hirsch is good in the lead role, but the character is somewhat cardboard by design since he needs to have his wits about him. Keith becomes a de facto second lead with a lot more uncertainty to conversely act via impulse. Eisley turns a damsel in distress role into an entertaining thorn sticking in the sides of those who took her and both Haley and Culkin earn laughs being dumb-as-rocks lackeys devoid of a single intelligent thought. For my money, though, it’s Facinelli who steals the show in a much smaller part by leaving the most indelible mark. He’s a purely comic relief wildcard who never stays off-screen long.

So, don’t go expecting Dead Money to really care about poker beyond dropping terminology to make the hands that Wilcox and Walpoth need to progress the plot seem tenser than they are. The film actually works best when the players at the table aren’t using their cards because then they finally have things to say with an enjoyable enough sense of humor to keep things moving right when it feels like it’s about to grow stagnant. Do we care if Andy and Chloe survive? Not really. Nor do we care who ends up with the money. We stick with it to find out, but the ride transcends the results. It was fun enough for me.

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Jocelyn Hudon, Peter Facinelli, and Emile Hirsch in DEAD MONEY; courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.