The Card Player Movie Review 309

The Card Player is a 2004 thriller/horror movie directed by Dario Argento. It stars Stefania Rocca and Liam Cunningham.

The story begins with a cop called Anna Mari(Rocca) who receives an email from an anonymous person saying that the police have to play online poker with him. He has kidnapped a woman and he will kill her if they lose the game. He has the woman on webcam and the cops can see her being tortured and eventually killed. They are no match for him as he seems to be a brilliant poker player.
He kills some of the girls on the internet and the cops are helpless. Anna is determined that they beat this guy as he says that if they win the poker game, he will let the victim go. When a British national is killed, a cop from England comes to join forces with Anna. He is John Brennan(Cunningham) and he and Anna look for leads.

They discover a poker wiz called Remo(Silvio Muccino). He is a young guy and he doesn't really want to help them at first when he sees what the stakes are. He eventually agrees to help them and he wins a couple of hands, but loses then. The cops are disappointed. The killer is in Anna's apartment but he escapes. John and Anna grow very close. The killer takes the police comissioners daughter and Remo has to play for her life. He does win and the killer lets her go. But, he kills Remo one night. John gets killed. Anna is kidnapped by the killer who turns out to be one of the cops in her department. She manages to escape him and he gets mowed down by a train.

I liked this film. It has got negative reviews but it isn't that bad. It was entertaining but I did figure out who the killer was in the first half of the movie. I thought that it was a little obvious, but on the whole, this was a good decent thriller. I will give it a 7/10.