I Hope the Movie Played to Full Houses
A little late in the day, but today's review: The Cincinnati Kid.
The Cincinnati Kid was a movie recommended to me by someone whose tastes I trust. To prove it, I went into it knowing nothing about the plot, just that it had a lot of well-known names in it. Happily, the recommendation was a good one, even if the movie’s never going to be on any list of true greats.
Despite a name that sounds like it belongs to a Western, the movie is a modern for the time story set in New Orleans and revolves around the titular Kid (Steve McQueen) and his reputation as a champion poker player. He’s already got IOU’s from pretty much all the players in town, but he’s yearning for recognition. And that opportunity has arisen, because Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson) is in town, and agrees to a high stakes poker game with the Kid and any other interested players. To make things more interesting, not only is the Kid’s friend and reputable poker dealer Shooter (Karl Malden) being pressured to throw the game in favor of the Kid, but the Kid is caught up in a love triangle of sorts with his girlfriend Christian (Tuesday Weld) and Shooter’s wife Melba (Ann-Margaret). In short, it’s basically a variant of a sports movie, only this time when someone says the stakes are high, they mean it in a slightly different way.
Credit where credit is due; the movie manages to make guys playing poker interesting, made all the more impressive by the fact that you generally don’t get to see the cards in play. This is primarily by virtue of establishing the Kid’s thirst to make it big and the “request” that’s been made of Shooter. Even if you don’t know anything about poker, you can follow the human drama and get invested that way. The cinematography also tries to vary the camera shots to keep things from feeling static, and there are montages and breaks in the game to shake things up from time to time. It might not be as tension filled as a movie centered around baseball or football, but it puts in a very good effort.
That being said, I was somewhat distracted during all this, because it was hard for me to tell if everybody, not just Shooter, was performing underhanded tricks. The Kid is accused of cheating right at the start of the movie, and it’s never definitively stated if he was or not. Plus, he’s clearly willing to do unsavory things, like attend cockfights or canoodle with Melba. To top it all off, there’s a scene where he demonstrates his ability to know what card gets picked from a deck, and while that’s a standard magic trick, it added to my suspicion of him. Meanwhile, thanks to typecasting, I couldn’t be sure if Lancey wasn’t pulling some dirty tricks himself. I suppose if that was the case, the camera would have shown us the schemes, but it’s just as possible that their cheating would have been blatantly obvious to the 1965 audience, and modern viewers aren’t aware of the signs. As it stands, it simultaneously added to and distracted me from the movie, and I think I’d have preferred a definitive answer so I could settle into the proper mindset.
This movie isn’t going to be for everyone, but if you like sports movies, unusual premises, or Edward G. Robinson, you might want to check it out. It has its flaws, including an abrupt ending, but it’s well put together overall. Sure, it’s decent instead of good or great, but sometimes, a decent hand is enough to win the pot, and I think the movie pulled it off in this particular case.
The Cincinnati Kid was a movie recommended to me by someone whose tastes I trust. To prove it, I went into it knowing nothing about the plot, just that it had a lot of well-known names in it. Happily, the recommendation was a good one, even if the movie’s never going to be on any list of true greats.
Despite a name that sounds like it belongs to a Western, the movie is a modern for the time story set in New Orleans and revolves around the titular Kid (Steve McQueen) and his reputation as a champion poker player. He’s already got IOU’s from pretty much all the players in town, but he’s yearning for recognition. And that opportunity has arisen, because Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson) is in town, and agrees to a high stakes poker game with the Kid and any other interested players. To make things more interesting, not only is the Kid’s friend and reputable poker dealer Shooter (Karl Malden) being pressured to throw the game in favor of the Kid, but the Kid is caught up in a love triangle of sorts with his girlfriend Christian (Tuesday Weld) and Shooter’s wife Melba (Ann-Margaret). In short, it’s basically a variant of a sports movie, only this time when someone says the stakes are high, they mean it in a slightly different way.
Credit where credit is due; the movie manages to make guys playing poker interesting, made all the more impressive by the fact that you generally don’t get to see the cards in play. This is primarily by virtue of establishing the Kid’s thirst to make it big and the “request” that’s been made of Shooter. Even if you don’t know anything about poker, you can follow the human drama and get invested that way. The cinematography also tries to vary the camera shots to keep things from feeling static, and there are montages and breaks in the game to shake things up from time to time. It might not be as tension filled as a movie centered around baseball or football, but it puts in a very good effort.
That being said, I was somewhat distracted during all this, because it was hard for me to tell if everybody, not just Shooter, was performing underhanded tricks. The Kid is accused of cheating right at the start of the movie, and it’s never definitively stated if he was or not. Plus, he’s clearly willing to do unsavory things, like attend cockfights or canoodle with Melba. To top it all off, there’s a scene where he demonstrates his ability to know what card gets picked from a deck, and while that’s a standard magic trick, it added to my suspicion of him. Meanwhile, thanks to typecasting, I couldn’t be sure if Lancey wasn’t pulling some dirty tricks himself. I suppose if that was the case, the camera would have shown us the schemes, but it’s just as possible that their cheating would have been blatantly obvious to the 1965 audience, and modern viewers aren’t aware of the signs. As it stands, it simultaneously added to and distracted me from the movie, and I think I’d have preferred a definitive answer so I could settle into the proper mindset.
This movie isn’t going to be for everyone, but if you like sports movies, unusual premises, or Edward G. Robinson, you might want to check it out. It has its flaws, including an abrupt ending, but it’s well put together overall. Sure, it’s decent instead of good or great, but sometimes, a decent hand is enough to win the pot, and I think the movie pulled it off in this particular case.