Bookie$
Picture: B
Sound: B- Extras: D Film: B-
Some films start out with such promise, then suddenly take
a nosedive. It is always a shame when
that happens, especially these days, when so many films start out so badly to
begin with upon conception. In the case
of Bookies (with the logo using a dollar sign), the situation has three
college friends deciding to go into the gambling business themselves, no matter
what a risk it might be. That is part
of the fun, more or less.
Toby (Nick Stahl) is our humble narrator, telling us how
his smart friend Casey (Lucas Haas) and real character of a friend Jude (Johnny
Galecki) eventually decide to pull together their connections and resources to
do booking of college games on campus itself.
At first, the film is smart and even promises to give us insight into
the world, which would have made for a fine film if they had just stuck with
it. The arrival of a love interest for
Toby (Rachael Leigh Cook) works well, but then director Mark Illsley starts to
let his poorer judgment take over and the film begins to slowly go off course.
This begins when the sped-up film moments start to kick
in. Once was fine, but then it becomes
repetitious and pointless, sadly translating into the film becoming clichéd before
turning into an unrealistic outright cartoon by the end. Since the cast and tone were right to begin
with, why mess with what worked? Part
of the problem is moving away too much from the basics that worked. Also the casting works so well that you believe
these people are friends. Too bad
Illsley and screenplay writer Michael Bacall were not friends enough to the
film, great cast and audience to keep the film on course. When they stopped imitating Scorsese, they
simply did not know where to go and all bets were off.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is nicely
transferred, shot by cinematographer Brendan Galvin with a nice use of colors
that show once again that you can make a gritty film that does not gut out the
color so much that it turns into colorization in reverse. It is the highlight of this DVD and a decent
performer, so low budget filmmakers should check it out just for this, if not
to see how not to do such a film. The
film was a Dolby Digital release, but the Dolby sound on this disc is 2.0
stereo with Pro Logic surrounds. I bet
this was 5.1 originally, but should have been if not otherwise. The only extra are hard-to-get-rid-of
trailers before the film begins (keep hitting the chapter skip button) and a
trailer for this film, which is really for its DVD release anyhow. The audience and there actors deserve better
and that will hopefully happen next time.
- Nicholas Sheffo
