CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
‘Deal’ is No Big Deal as Career of Burt Reynolds Fades Away
CHICAGO – Poor Burt Reynolds. As the No. 1 box-office star from 1978 to 1982, he revived his film career in 1997 with “Boogie Nights”. Since then, he has had the long, slow decline of “B” movies and bad remakes. Reynolds even tainted his own legacy by participating in the horrible 2005 redo of “The Longest Yard”.
Will he ever get the one last script that will return him to glory? The film “Deal” isn’t it. Reynolds plays Tommy Vinton: a mysterious stranger who begins observing young poker hotshot Alex (Bret Harrison).
Read Patrick McDonald’s full review of “Deal” in our reviews section. View our full, high-resolution “Deal” image gallery. |
Alex is from the Internet age and won an online contest to get to the World Series of Poker. Tommy is an old-school, professional poker player from the 1970s whose luck ran out shortly thereafter.
He hasn’t played in 20 years on a promise to his wife. Tommy sees something in the Internet hotshot, though, and on the sly begins to coach him and bankroll his run through the poker tournament circuit.
As it happens in old mentor/young hotshot films, the two must angrily part. When you throw in the subplot of Reynolds’ wife leaving him, it sets up the inevitable showdown between old professional Tommy and his former protégé. It has to be at the World Series of Poker, too.
Photo credit: MGM |
Photo credit: MGM |