Wild Card, Review: Raw Deal

Based on the novel Heat, by William Goldman (now 84, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, Marathon Man, Dreamcatcher), who also wrote the screenplay, Wild Card is a lukewarm  a remake of the 1986 movie, starring Burt Reynolds.

Las Vegas bodyguard Nick Wild (Jason Statham), who insists on being called a “chaperone”, has a gambling problem, drinks a lot and wants badly to get away for a long holiday. He figures he just needs $500,000 to get out and relax somewhere quiet for the next five years. The problem is, he only has $500 in savings. When his former girl-friend, Holly (Dominik García-Lorido), a hooker-with-a-heart-of-stone, is raped and badly beaten up by a gangster Danny De Marco (Milo Ventimiglia) and his two goons, he wants to help her get revenge, but discovers that Danny is the son of a mob boss and the protégé of a hotel-owner and Don called Baby (Stanley Tucci). A second track runs parallel to this main story, and involves a computer geek called Cyrus (sounds Cytus at places, played by Michael Angarano) who has cracked a code that ensures he keeps winning at cards and makes millions upon millions. But he is essentially a coward, and always afraid of getting mugged, so he hires Wild to make him tough, and protect him in the meanwhile.

Goldman’s story and screenplay are both predictable and thinly spread. For quite few scenes, the film seems to assume the narrative style of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, focusing entirely on long rounds of card-games. Three action episodes are built-in, which might count as too few by Jason Statham fans. All three are shot in blurs, with Statham using a credit card and a medal as deadly weapons, almost as a tribute to Harold ‘Oddjob’ Sakata in Goldfinger. It is difficult to believe that a brutal mobster attacks his nemesis without adequate back-up and no weapons to speak of. It is equally incredible that Card has scruples that are at complete variance to his drinking and gambling habits and the ambience of the town that he lives and breathes. Fights involve generous blood-spilling and targeting a man’s privates with a pair of gardeners’ shears, as revenge for his own earlier act of threatening to shoot the woman through her unmentionables.

Wild’s day-dreaming about a holiday cruise comes across as a symptom of some recurring ailment rather than recurring yearnings. Those are among the few occasions where Statham’s part would have been expected to act, but they are too flimsy in the context of the plot, and shot in a perhaps unintentionally funny style. The narrative is further confounded with unintelligible accents, including Statham’s, and informing viewers that he is part British does not help make his accent any more palatable. The first scene in the film is straight out of 100+ Hindi films, in which the hero pays a heavy to get beaten-up, so that he can impress his date with his bravura.

Simon West (British born film-maker, started at the BBC in London, as an editor. He then moved on to direct several award-winning commercials. Feature credits include The Mechanic, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The Expendables 2, Con Air). Wild Card is not among the films that West will count among his best. It needed edge of the seat action, some juicy sex and a few exciting action spectacles to sustain it. Sadly, none of these are on offer. Gore and dirty talk are no substitute. Maybe the Indian censors were harsh. Nevertheless, there have been scores of films that held their own in spite of numerous cuts.

Jason Statham can just add to his list of came and went films. Dominik García-Lorido is a Cuban American, and actor Andy Garcia's eldest child. She faced rejection after rejection, despite having acted since she was a kid. While she awaited casting decisions, she attended UCLA. Was seen in City Island, The Lost City, The Line and Steal Big Steal Little. Here she is okay. The relationship between Card and Holly is not clearly defined, so you do not know what chemistry to expect between them. In any case, there is pretty little, to be sure.

Milo Ventimiglia (Grace of Monaco, Tell) gets good footage, coming across no different from any other similar type-cast character. Michael Angarano (Empire State, The English Teacher) looks a cross between a man and a woman, and you will get the context if you learn that in the original script, he is shown as a character who has undergone a sex-change operation. Goldman has not retained that angle in this film version. Max Casella as Osgood hams deliciously, Sofia Vergara is good eye-candy, Anne Heche is wasted as a waitress and Hope Good makes a good blackjack dealer. Some interesting lines are reserved for Stanley Tucci, who enjoys the baby-faced Don act.

Rating: **

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422503916&v=hWu2e8TpEWs&x-yt-cl=85027636&feature=player_embedded