aimless-46 You gotta like the "4 Dogs Playing Poker" title but you won't find any of those "dogs sitting around a poker table" pictures in this film. Instead the four dogs are four twenty-something characters recruited by Tim Curry to steal a priceless statuette for a crooked art dealer (Forest Whitaker). Things go wrong and they spend the majority of the movie trying to extricate themselves from their predicament. They finally settle on a plan to take out back dated life insurance policies and randomly kill one of themselves, using the insurance money to square their account with Whitaker. If all this sounds a bit contrived to you, it might be wise to avoid this film as it requires considerable suspension of logic during the viewing, and even more later when you reflect back on the unexpected twists taken by the story.The worst part of the whole experience is that aside from the massive plot holes the film is pretty entertaining; making it a frustrating experience since just a little bit of inventiveness by the writer could have successfully closed those holes.The film wastes little time getting going as the carefully planned theft is already in progress as the titles roll. The team displays just the right mix of amateurism and luck to build some nice suspense and their consignment of the statuette to the purser of a freighter provides some nice ambiguity and foreshadowing. Things slow down for the remainder of the film and the logic of subsequent events is a bit dodgy. You are unlikely to guess the ending because the director provides insufficient clues. Had there been sufficient information revealed in a form disguised by clever misdirection, "4 Dogs Playing Poker" would have been a real treat. The most effective tool that the writer/director of suspense films has is the power to show only what they want the viewer to see. This combines with the ability to draw the eye to certain things in the frame and to distract the viewer from more important clues. Manipulating the viewer up to a point but then allowing them free rein to invest each development with their own interpretation (insert "Sixth Sense" and "Kansas City" here). Unfortunately "4 Dogs Playing Poker" simply withholds any important clues. Viewer hindsight does not reveal any reason to feel guilty about not guessing the outcome nor to feel thrilled at being cleverly fooled."4 Dogs" has good physical casting with decent performances from the entire ensemble, Curry is excellent and Olivia Williams shows considerable range as there is mega distance between her character here and her extraordinary performance in "Rushmore". Balthazar Getty's close resemblance to Charlie Sheen is distracting but not really a problem. But to be very good, a small movie like "4 Dogs" must give the viewer complex and realistic characters, particularly when the last half of the movie is more character study than action adventure or psychological thriller. Unfortunately that does not happen and all we end up with are one-dimensional stereotypes that we have no reason to care about. Apparently in their desire to reveal no clues about the resolution, the writer and director excluded anything that might have passed for characterization.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

JChaplin One of the worst movies I've seen in a long time, particularly since the idea of it is quite a good one, with a lot of potential. Without the interesting basic premise it surely would have rated a 1.So what's wrong with it?1. 45 minutes of boring, badly acted, unconvincingly plotted, standard 'art-theft' action before the main plot line is actually introduced.2. Shockingly weak dialogue - every bad thing 'sucks'. And sure there are lots of movies where every other word is fk or a variant thereof (which is fine if authentic) but here, almost exclusively in the latter half, the fk word is so clumsily and obviously inserted into almost every line that it becomes very tedious3. Really poor characterisation. Are the characters smart or stupid? You can't really tell because the authors never decided - most of the time their actions and motivations don't ring true at all.4. One glaringly obviously plot development - (no spoiler) but if you end up watching this movie to humour someone you love (the only excuse) then you'll know what's going to happen as soon as...5. Do characters still have to smoke cigarettes? The year is 2002, not 1952 thanks very much.Enough said. This movie is crap - pure and simple. One day someone may use the idea to make a decent movie - but it won't be anyone who worked on this movie.

NightCrawler92 I don't know much about movies in general, and I don't understand what "film noir" is. The only thing I can say about this film is that the first scenes in Argentina were very poorly done, it was obvious that they didn't film it here. I was really upset when I saw those people speaking mexican in the Buenos Aires port. The rest of the film was too predictable for me.I give it a 3 out of 10.

PabloGT There is one thing I dislike the most about certain movies, and this is when they pretend to be smart, well-made, and to be something, while they indeed lack details, arguments, script, and the acting capacity of its stars is not even considered. This is all about "Four Dogs Playing Poker". At a certain moment you feel that you left your brain somewhere else, because you can't believe what you are seeing. One can be mislead, though. You see big names, i.e., Tim Curry, Forrest Whitaker, playing small roles, and you immediately presume that you are in front of a piece-of-art that has convinced those big names to work almost for free just to help a young and gifted director. I don't want to judge their intentions, but I can tell that the only good thing about "Four Dogs Playing Poker" is that keep you all the time filling up all the details that are missing. I don't want to tell you what details are missing, I prefer that you rent the movie, see it when you have nothing to do, and challenge your brain to find out all those things that make no sense at all. If the movie wanted to play a little bit serious, it should have joked about the stupid idea of its main characters, and show how unproductive it was at the end. That would have at least save the day. In a scale of 1 to 10, let not be so hard on them, let's give a 3+.