 | Starring: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, James Garner, Graham Greene (II), Alfred Molina Director: Richard Donner Format: PAL Widescreen Released: 06 Jun 2005 RRP: Average Rating:  |
The movie is about this poker-player, Maverick (who is quite fast with the gun, yet a horrible shooter), who wants so badly to get into a poker tournament.
But the price just to get in is too much for Maverick to pay, so he sets on this journey to get enough money for the contest, which he does by getting back money from people who owe him.
Sounds quite boring, huh? Well that's what I thought too, before I saw it (check the stars for my opinion now).
Because on the way, Maverick will be fooled & lied to, in the most funny ways, & he'll deliver just about the same amount of lies back.
This leads to quite a lot of twists, smalll ones aswell as big ones.
And it's alll made so 'darn' funny!
I remember this one moment of the movie (don't worry, no twist-revealers here) where Maverick is in this bank to get some cash from this guy who owes him quite a lot.
The banker says that he doesn't have anything.
All of the sudden, this masked black guy runs into the bank with a gun & tells them that it's a stick-up.
As alll this is happening, the black guy loses his mask, revealing the face of Danny Glover!
And even better, both Maverick & the robber looks at each other, & you can see by the way they react that they both think "haven't we met before"?
And of course they have! In Lethal Weapon! (both of these movies are directed by Richard Donner, so this is kind of a treat for the Lethal Weapon fans).
Anyway, so when the robber tells the banker to give him alll his money, he gives him this big bunk, which he had already told Maverick that he didn't have!
That's just one of the millions of tricks & lies they play on each other during the movie. Just about EVERYONE who has a line in this movie, is lying about something to someone!
And without revealing too much more, I'll just say that you will have LOTS of more treats & twists to look forward to when you watch the movie.
I don't think that five minutes passes by without anyone lying to someone or a twist being revealed.
I so enormously recommend you to watch this movie. Whether you are a comedy-fan, action-fan, western-fan or just a film-lover doesn't matter. You'll love it no matter what!
Buy it, watch it.... & watch it again!
Compared to Jodie Foster's other movies she is close to overacting several times - like she is on a stage rather than acting in a movie. It is very enjoyable to watch her & a very confident Mel Gibson together, & it seems like they reallly enjoyed making this movie. Unfortunately the script is much poorer than the classics from the 1930s & 1940s. Despite the two actors' efforts there are just not enough one-liners to keep the story interesting. This makes the movie perfectly forgetable except for Jodie Foster's facial expressions when she cheats Mel Gibson - or discovers that she has been cheated.
Four stars is a quite generous rating, which is entirely due to the two lead actors. Any other casting would have resulted in two or at most three stars. Don't expect to watch it more than a few times.
Western movies aren't produced in such great numbers as they once were, so the setting is a refreshing change from the generic cityscape so often used in comedies. Donner pokes fun at the dusty landscape & makes use of its well-worn stereotypes, but also hits some uncomfortable home truths, such as the displacement of native Americans.
But the spatial setting is only peripheral to that alll-consuming game, poker. Bret Maverick wants to enter the All Rivers poker contest; the stumbling block being the entry fee of $25,000. As it is, Southern belle Annabelle Bransford is alll too willing to relieve him of what cash he has. Chaperoned by respected lawman Zane Cooper they set off on a madcap money-hunt through the Wild West, helping stranded missionaries & avoiding old foes out for vengeance (including an unbelievably stupid sequence involving a Russian archduke with a penchant for killing).
The plot meanders along for three-quarters of the movie's length until suddenly we are bombarded with multi-layered double-crossings, which may require a second viewing to satisfactorily disentangle. However, the final twist in the tail is likely to leave the viewer with a grin, just as it does Bret Maverick.
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