One Last Game (2011/MVD Visual DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: D Main Program: C+
Gellert
is a high stake gambler, a card shark, cheat and womanizer; he just can't walk
away from money, or when other taunts him, but specially when there is $250,000
on the table. Between drinking games,
strip games, poker and Texas
hold them up, Gellert finds himself in a heaven and hell prison of his own
creation. No way out except to play the
one last game to win it all... only catch is if someone wins, someone else must
lose. Unfortunately in Director Ayassi’s One Last Game, Gellert is an addict; his problems are compared to
Elizabeth Kuebler Ross's 5 stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining,
depression, and then acceptance.
Denial that he is addicted, anger
that he can't stop and to admit he has a problem, bargaining, trying to
fooling himself and buy his way out, depression realizing he HAS problem
and the past which haunts him, and finally his acceptance of the
truth. As he plays each game he sells a
piece of his soul, he get flashback of past and people he knew, their love and
his betrayal and he realizes the last game is not when he wins everything, but
when he loses everything.
Funny how
this plays like Alien 3, this takes
place in entirely in a small room (another stuck-in-a script) with a poker
table and a bar with 3 over the hill gamblers and 1 old lady. As the characters play their games, the line
between reality and past blur, specially when a dead person from a characters
past joins in. The main character
bounces back and forth from being with friends playing game to them torturing
him. It pretty apparent early on the
character was already dead, and compared his life to a card game and abstract
psychology.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image and lossy Dolby Digital sound are not
great and show the low budget here, plus there are no extras. Those curious should catch it, though.
- Ricky Chiang
