When he reveals a table full of poker hands, he sounds like his 'Good Will Hunting' prodigy spouting off math formulas. You wait for Dahl, whose acerbic humor enlivened 'Red Rock West' and 'The Last Seduction,' to inject some notes of irony or darkness here, but he just presents these interactions at face value.ĭamon carries the movie along, though Mike isn't much of a stretch. 'We can't run from who we are,' the professor tells him, even characterizing his support of Mike's poker-playing as a 'mitzvah' (a Hebrew word casually understood as 'good deed'), as if gambling and the law are equally worthy fields. In the movie's most stupefying relationship, a mensch of a law professor (Martin Landau) relates to Mike how he grew up in a family of rabbis and was expected to follow suit but instead pursued the field he loved: the law.

His driving forces are his ego and the saying: 'It's immoral to let a sucker keep his money.' Thus 'Rounders,' which at first looks to be a gritty portrait of gamesmanship and compulsive gambling, winds up as a ludicrous ode to self-actualization.