Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on October 8, 2004, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Evil is afoot in Italy. A nefarious person or persons have set in motion a plot with dire consequences. Someone has kidnapped Dario Argento and replaced him with an impostor—or at least that’s the only explanation for The Card Player, a literally pale imitation of the gialli upon which the veteran Italian filmmaker made his name. It is also, on its own terms, a hackneyed and ludicrous murder thriller that forgoes much of the director’s signature flamboyance in an apparent attempt to cash in on the trend toward American-style serial-killer thrillers.
And before we go any further, a word about the whole international-appeal thing. In an age when subtitled horror from other countries (most notably the Asian territories) is finding an increasing audience in the U.S., it’s dumbfounding that Argento here continues the practice of surrounding a couple of English-speaking leads with Italian actors speaking the language phonetically, who were dubbed in later. The resulting sound mix is hollow and distracting and the dialogue is often awkward at best and idiotic at worst. This might have flown back in the ’60s and ’70s, but in this day and age it’s unacceptable; I don’t know if a subtitled Italian version would be an improvement, but this approach only serves to make The Card Player even more unconvincing.
Not that it needed much help. The script by Argento and frequent collaborator Franco Ferrini plays like something they pulled out of their bottom drawer (and apparently it was, after another project they were working on fell apart). Stefania Rocca plays Anna, a policewoman who becomes the target of the titular maniac, who challenges her to play Internet poker against him with especially high stakes: If she loses, a woman he has abducted will die on the computer screen before her eyes. The idea of a killer matching wits with a cop this way had potential—except that the game he plays is basic five-card draw, in which the major factor is simple dumb luck. Watching Anna trying to out-strategize the villain might have been tense, but where’s the suspense in a bunch of watching police waiting for random cards to be turned over? The idea Argento attempts to explore is that of people with an overwhelming attraction to risk—which leads the police to put bungee jumpers, skydivers and “people who walk along railroad tracks” at the top of their list of potential suspects.
On and on it goes like this, with a token attempt to give Anna a Dark Past that ties in with the current mayhem. “I hate cards,” she says early on. “I hate gambling,” she says later. Think she had a close friend or relative whose life was destroyed by card-playing? Right you are. Think it’ll add subtext to her character or an extra twist to the story? Nope, not really.
Then again, story has never been the most important component of Argento’s filmmaking—it’s always been about the style, and the director falls short in that department as well. The heightened camerawork and baroque murder setpieces that have previously distinguished his films are almost completely lacking here; cinematographer Benoit Debie’s wan, grotty visual approach may well match the vision of prior collaborator Gaspar Noé (Irreversible), but it does little for The Card Player’s proceedings. The murders mostly occur offscreen, and while Sergio Stivaletti contributes a couple of nastily realistic cadavers, there are only one or two brief moments that are even remotely scary. The grating score by the usually reliable Claudio Simonetti, who did fine work on Argento’s previous Sleepless, doesn’t help.
The movie doesn’t even offer the basic pleasures of a decent mystery, with little attempt made to develop interesting suspects or even fun red herrings. The investigation by Anna and visiting Irish detective John Brennan (Dog Soldiers’ Liam Cunningham, sadly misused) is underheated and dependent on coincidence, and when the killer and his motivation are finally unveiled, not only do they bear no connection to anything else in the film, but his rampage in general makes no sense. And just when you think things can’t get any more nonsensical, Argento serves up a climactic setpiece so jaw-droppingly ridiculous it defies belief. It’s at this point that you may start to think The Card Player is intended as a sendup of the giallo genre, but the movie’s laughs are largely unintentional.
It pains me to write this, because I’ve long been a fan of Argento’s influential oeuvre and always welcome the occasion of his films making their way to American big screens. Card Player is having a week-long run at New York’s Two Boots Pioneer Theater, and Anchor Bay plans to give the movie further theatrical engagements in advance of its DVD release. All this just adds a level of irony to the fact that The Card Player is the first Argento feature that would likely lose absolutely nothing if viewed as a fullscreen video.
