6 Best Gambling Movies In History Of Cinematography
However, bad gambling habits do exist and there have been several films over the years that have shown what can happen if you don’t gamble responsibly. In addition they often fail to provide the audience with portrayals of responsible gambling. The film images of incredible luck are more likely to encourage irresponsible gambling.
Incidentally, 21 compresses time considerably; in real life, the MIT Blackjack Team existed in one form or another for more than two decades. But I promised my editor I’d confine this article to real-life gambling stories that have made it to the silver screen. So here are my picks for the cream of the biographical gambling movie crop. Paul Thomas Anderson’s first movie is about gambling and is pretty good. Hard Eight is an early Paul Thomas Anderson film about an elderly gambler tutoring a younger one (John C. Reilly). The film 21 is an adaptation of a book called “Bringing Down the House”.
We examine how gambling has been depicted in recent films, and explore the messages about gambling in these films. One key topic will be the exploration of misinformation about gambling. For example, irresponsibly happy endings in movies about pathological gambling could encourage problematic gambling. It is therefore important to examine the images of gambling presented in films to determine what distortions are present in recent movies.
If you’re based in Germany, make sure to log onto Quasar Gaming to play alongside your favorite ’80s movie stars as you watch the movies that we are going to take you through. If towards the end, you want to jump outside ’80s you can always explore the newer options on the site. The iconic Dusting Hoffman and Tom Cruise gambling scene is one of the most famous scenes in the late 1980s cinematography. “20 grand open”, says Eddy absolutely sure that he has the winning hand, and calling Hatchet Harry’s bluff in one of the most memorable gambling scenes ever, only to fall victim to the ingenious scam. Fortunately, the players today can be sure that there is nothing of the sort going on behind the curtain when they are playing casino slots online. Eddy is one of the few phenomenal characters from the Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels movie.
Inspired by the true story of mafia associate Frank Rosenthal, the film stars Robert De Niro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein, a handicapper turned casino manager. It chronicles the rise and fall of Ace, his conniving pal Nicky , and his hustler wife Ginger against the backdrop of a once glorious empire in the glowing lights of the Nevada desert. Welcome toMovie DNA, a column that recognizes the direct and indirect cinematic roots of both new and classic movies. Learn some film history, become a more well-rounded viewer, and enjoy like-minded works of the past. This entry recommends movies to watch after Martin Scorsese’s Casino.
( High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story (a W. Vidmer,
However, when he finds himself falling into old patterns, he realizes that he can’t keep running away from his problems. Dinner Rush follows the story of a father-and-son duo who own an Italian restaurant and have vested interests in the gambling world. Gambling and law-breaking are always going to be closely associated. Here’s why – when some gamblers are in the red, they resort to crime to stay afloat. It makes the clean players look bad, but at least it makes for good stories. This one is all about gambling and high-stakes poker in the Wild West.
The film is brilliantly funny, more than a little bittersweet, and a perfect character study of two compulsive gamblers. Many other motion picture directors and cinematographers have attempted to make movies revolving around the casinos and the gambling categories. You can watch most of them on popular online OTT platforms like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu, etc.
Some of the scenes that you are going to enjoy are just fiction or exaggeration. After watching these five movies, you’ll be motivated to start your gambling journey. If you realize that you have a gambling problem, it’s always important to seek help. The Cincinnati Kid has all the things you can wish for in a classic poker movie for instance women, betrayal, action, and guns to name a few.
In fact, gin rummy is the game Stuey felt most adept at, once noting, “I suppose it’s possible for someone to be a better no-limit holdem player than me. It is certainly better than the 2004 Canadian made-for-TV movie The Last Casino, which was very loosely based on Bringing Down the House. Another surprise is that some of the movies about gambling that we all assume are fictional are actually based on real-life people. Killing Them Softly is a story about an amateur crook who is hired by a poker player to rob an illegitimate game hosted by Mafia bosses. Fed up with his excuses, the gambling ring owner gives him a week to pay off his debt with cash – or his life. Desperate to keep living, the professor enlists the services of a few of his students to help him find the money.
Audience Reviews For The Gambler
We took the liberty to include casino heist movies into this list of casino movies, but hey, same thrill, same enviroment, same thing! Directed by the great Paul Thomas Anderson, this neo-noir classic follows a chance encounter between a veteran card player and a penniless orphan (John C. Reilly) who hit the Vegas strip. A writer bets that the story they’re writing is one that people will want to hear. A director bets that they’ve chosen the right crew to tell that story.
- In The Cooler, the casino employs a person with incredibly bad luck as a “cooler” to kill the luck of the tables.
- We found this movie as one of the top gambling movies because of its intriguing plot and unique representation of Scorsese’s view of Las Vegas – showing a Janus-like face which is both shiny and cruel.
- If you want to have fun with your friends or understand what happens in the gambling world, these five movies are ideal for you.
- He ropes publicist Sidney Falco into the scheme and sets off a narrative of moral corruption and blackmail.
It follows a mishap-filled story of Doug and his 3 friends – Alan , Stu , and Phil . The odd crew decides, 2 days before Doug’s wedding, to make a trip to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. The push-and-pull between the couple continues until Lester (a friend of McDermott’s) comes out of the slammer and is required to pay off an old debt owed to the KGB. The showdown unfolds right before your eyes, with lots of table banter and poker bluffing strategies. If you keep a tab on what’s happening in the world of poker, then Stu Ungar needs no introduction. He’s well-known poker guru famed for becoming the first-ever player to scoop 3 WSOP Main Event tournaments in the history of World Series of Poker.
The story is told by an aspiring writer who ends up taking a job as a croupier. He soon realises that the gambling world serves as a source for a best-selling novel and begins his journey of telling tales of the tables on paper. 21 is one of the few gambling films that are inspired by real-life events that have achieved mainstream success. The movie is described as a modern classic set in the age before online gambling was a well-established niche. The tale focuses on Kevin Spacey, a math professor, who trains a couple of his students the skill of card counting.
These films often make the thieves seem glamorous and their theft seems justified. Curiously, the original version of Ocean’s Eleven , filmed in the heyday of mob-run gambling, did not depict the casino owners as criminals. But in the recent remake https://www.top10films.co.uk/60104-10-great-movies-about-gambling/ of Ocean’s Eleven (Weintraub & Soderbergh, 2001) and its sequel, Ocean’s Twelve (Weintraub & Soderbergh, 2004), the casino boss is portrayed as a ruthless gangster. However, not all movies about gambling are about problem or pathological gamblers.
In The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas , Fred Flintstone is treated to an unusually long winning streak and then the casino owner throws a switch and Fred loses everything. In Stealing Harvard (Cavan & McCulloch, 2002), a young man needs money to pay for his niece’s education. He unsuccessfully tries to steal the money, gives up, and instead wins the money he needs at a racetrack.
Similarly, The Gambler includes a few scenes in which Axel Freed justifies his irrational behaviour as a conscious exercise of free will and power. Owning Mahowny (Camon, Hamori, McLean, & Kwietniowski, 2003) is the true story of a Toronto banker who embezzles millions of dollars to support a gambling spree. The Gambler (Chartoff, Winkler, & Reisz, 1974) is about a college professor and gambler who is so egotistical that he believes he can change reality by force of will. The authors then discussed the themes that they thought were depicted in the film. The authors then collected the descriptions of movies and organized them into general themes.