Joe Francis reviews All In

One word comes to mind while watching All In.

Paycheck.

That’s all these people really wanted or needed out of this movie. There’s no redeeming quality to this picture at all.

Wait, you know what? Another word comes to mind.

Cliche.

As in this movie is so full of them the mother even screams ‘IF YOU LEAVE, YOU CAN NEVER COME BACK!’ before falling into a fit of tears as her daughter leaves for medical school.

Granted, it’s a shitty poker movie for the PG-13 crowd since it is rated PG-13. Obviously there was some kind of backing for this movie, since it had the likes of Michael Madsen, Lou Gossett jr, Dominique Swain and many others. The cardboard deliveries only hammered home the fact that the gentleman calling the shots couldn’t direct his actors down to a buger joint for lunch. The picture quality (not the shots, mind you) and the sound were on par. Nothing imaginative, even with the sets made me think that anyone involved had an ounce of creative juice in their bodies. Everything from the acting to the carpet in the casino was text book bad.

To make matters worse, it attempts to be somewhat deep by giving you flashbacks of a young Ace with her father, then without warning, pushes the viewer to the present where she’s a doctor struggling with moral dilemmas and moonlighting as a poker whiz. This trumped the bad movie by allowing it to be poorly edited.

Oddly enough, the I wasn’t able to see the last 15 minutes (irony?) due to the dvd going bat shit on me, forcing me to stop the madness all together. So even though I’d said previously I’d never write a review for a movie I hadn’t sat all the way through, I’m pretty sure I got the gist of this one.

Even if you’re a fan of the actors involved, AVOID this one. It’s just a stale stagnant forgettable story that you’ve seen before in any number of the recycled story arcs from a WB show.