'All In': The Poker Movie

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There have been a few attempts at making poker documentaries in recent years, none of which have resulted in a definitive depiction of the game.

2013's Bet Raise Fold tells the stories of three successful online poker players, but fails to get across the excitement of high stakes poker. On the other side of the spectrum, the French documentary Nosebleed has an awful lot of poker in it, but it never quite manages to get inside the heads of its protagonists. All In: The Poker Movie takes a broader approach than either of these, which is both a strength and the film's key weakness.

The main focus for All In is the boom in poker that took place from the end of the 1990's until Black Friday in 2011, when the U.S. government closed down some of the largest online poker sites for engaging in irregular business practices. This seismic event in the poker industry took place just as the documentary was being completed. As a result, the film makers took the decision to delay its release in order to top and tail the documentary with footage relating to Black Friday.

Unfortunately, this extra story element adds more complexity to a documentary that was fairly scattered to begin with. The end result is a film that feels more like a compilation of poker highlights than a cohesive story about the game. Given the two hour running time, the disjointed nature of the material could make All In a bit wearisome for all but the most committed.

The ground covered by the documentary includes a look back at the history of poker as a game for riverboat hustlers, then for World War 2 soldiers killing time when not in combat and a look at the slump in popularity that poker suffered in the early 90s. The story of how the game went from being a pursuit for outlaws to being mainstream in the 90s is one that could sustain a documentary in and of itself, but it forms only one aspect of All In.

Other sections include a lengthy exploration of Rounders, the 1998 film that stars Matt Damon and John Malkovich. While Rounders has been hailed by writers like Jason Kirk as a "cult classic" and is undoubtedly a popular film among poker fans (and fans of over the top acting - John Malkovich's performance as Teddy KGB is hilarious) the importance of the film to the story of the online poker boom is debatable. Rounders was not a hit at the box office and the rise in popularity of online poker was already underway as the film's cult audience started to build.

Another section of the documentary, and one that could have stood by itself as a feature length film, is the extraordinary story of Chris Moneymaker, who entered the World Series of Poker as an amateur and managed to beat the professionals in 2003. The triumph of this real life Rocky Balboa of the poker world is probably the most interesting event that took place during the noughties and played a key role in drawing more people into the game.

Yet another strand to the film is the impact of the hole camera that was invented by Henry Orenstein. This development was the latest in a long series of inventions by Orenstein, who counts the Transformers range of toys among his past achievements. The importance of the hole camera for poker is that it allows television viewers to see which cards were being held by the players. This instantly transformed poker into an engaging spectator sport that drew in respectable television audiences around the world. In turn, this helped fuel demand for online poker.

For poker fans looking back at this period of the game, there are a number of interviews present in the film that are genuinely interesting. Howard Lederer is quoted in the film as saying that the "heroes of poker don't cheat." His company, Full Tilt, was one of the online poker providers that were closed down on Black Friday, giving the interview a significance that wouldn't have been clear to the film makers when they were filming it. In a way, it is a shame that the documentary wasn't made a year or two later, so that the story of Black Friday could have been told in more detail.

The writer of Rounders, Brian Koppleman, is filmed saying that he is less upset than he might be by the effect of Black Friday, due to the fact that it has returned poker to being the more underground, romantic pursuit that he depicted in his film. This romanticised view of the game is clearly shared by the director of All In, Doug Tirola and by many of the other people interviewed during the documentary.

The events of Black Friday are given a significance that might seem bemusing to non-American audiences, who were largely unaffected. A whole series of people are asked by the film makers to say where they were when they heard the news about the online poker sites being closed down. This amplifies the event to something of the significance of the JFK assassination, a parallel that is explicitly drawn by one of the interviewees. No matter how much you love poker, this level of hyperbole verges on the silly.

The thing that makes All In watchable is the real affection that the interviewees and the film makers have for the game of poker. For poker fans, having this affection reflected back at them from the screen is likely to be heart-warming. For the uncommitted, however, a whole series of talking heads waxing lyrical about how much they like the game is unlikely to be as convincing as a film that tells an engaging story, conveying the thrills and spills of a game that generations of people have found compelling.

To conclude, All In is a bit too unstructured to keep the interest of a wider audience, but for poker fans there is enough here to keep them entertained for a couple of hours.

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