Best Hollywood gambling scene?

Most of them suck. Here are the ones I hate:

-21. 'Nuff said. Gets just about everything wrong about card counting.
-Rain Man and The Hangover for the same reason, except worse. ("Nobody can count into a six deck shoe!")
-Casino Royale (2008 version) and The Cincinnati Kid, for their ridiculously improbable final poker hands.
-Maverick, for the same reason.
-The Bounty Hunter. Really, you are the world's greatest gambler and the best way to make 5K is to stack it up on the pass line?

The one scene that I did like was in the first reel of Indecent Proposal, where Demi Moore and Robert Redford play craps and baccarat at the LV Hilton. That actually made sense. ("What we want--what we need--is a nine." "Just throw a seven. Eleven works too.")

Most of the earlier James Bond movies get it right, too, and the original Casino Royale has a great baccarat scene.

How about all the Vegas Vacation scenes with Rusty being Mr. Papagorgio? Those were fun yet highly unlikely to ever happen!

Quote: teddys

Most of them suck. Here are the ones I hate ...

I think most gamblers are quite realistic in their views and any "hated" gambling scene would be one that is absurdly improbable and annoyingly unrealistic. Unfortunately, Hollywood directors want something memorable, not realistic.

What would a realistic gambling scene really be? A drunken player? A bored dealer? An obnoxious security guard? A room key that doesn't work? A slatternly woman reeking of beer and sweat instead of a "Pretty Woman" type hooker? Or would a realistic gambling scene simply be an unremarkable montage featuring routine dice rolls without anything special? An average player at BJ losing twenty-five dollars? An average looking girl at a different type of twenty-five dollar BJ? A Tray Lizard from Kentucky massaging her sore feet while on a break and then going home to screaming kid in a trailer? A waitress getting stiffed? A lonesome loser going to a Narcotics Anonymous 12-step meeting? A boxman who falls asleep? A dealer who gets hit by the dice and just stands there at his minimum wage job?

I think the best Hollywood scenes about gamblers are the ones not shot in casinos or any gambling situation.

Best:

The scene in Casino when Sharon Stone clips the guy's stack, then throws the chips in the air when the jig is up.

The final gambling scene in The Cooler, not for its realism but for the way the film puts the guy's entire life on the line as the stakes, and makes you feel it. I was sweating that roll just as if I had my own life on the table. Great job, Macy.

Funniest gambling scenes:

1) On a cruise, Bender sets the dice inside his hand and throws. He loses, and says,

"My cheating unit malfunctioned! I want a do-over."

The dealer answers, "House limit is two do-overs."



2)Homer Simpson on the phone: "Vegas? Put ten on black!" Short time passes, then: "D'oh!... Yes, I'll send you a check."

Quote: teddys

-Maverick, for the same reason.

Johnny Cash on camera for five seconds? Some real gamblers in cameo appearances I understand, but don't think I saw the movie.

There was some movie of long ago about a newspaperman in Los Angeles assigned to write about compulsive gamblers when unknown to his editor he himself is compulsive gambler. I can't recall the film but its got to have something since it was nominated for FOUR awards for bad films.

The Grifters: I don't recall much of the film. Some horse racing stuff in it. Some dice cheats. I don't recall any scenes as being particularly good but supposedly the final scene made one star vomit uncontrollably. An earlier scene involved a Bookie burning his tout with a cigar to her hand for having saved her son's life instead of laying off the bookie's bets on time.

A film I can't recall the title of, but it involved compulsive gamblers one of whom would bet with cab drivers for the fare and who got driven to a rough part of town just so he could have the thrill of taking on a pimp armed with a knife when he himself was unarmed. The one good gambling scene was when a Bookie came round to collect some funds and the muscle accompanying the Bookie just stood there in the background and said nothing. Good casting. He looked threatening by just standing in the background but was not some musclebound heavy.

Film about the MIT folks who trained by dumping about twenty pounds of ice cubes over a card counter to see if it would break his concentration. I laughed at such nonsense. How many casinos are going to dump twenty pounds of ice on a blackjack player?

Next,,, with Nicholas Gage as a psychic magician playing Blackjack and getting caught within about ten seconds of entering the casino because he won his first hand.

I like most of the scenes in "Rounders" though sometimes on TV the card playing scenes are edited out for some reason. Also like Nicky Santoro's "hit me again" rant mostly because that one actually happened.

"21" is a farce, and a wildly inaccuarate one, at that. "Rain Man" is absurd, for several reasons. The stupid final hands in the Cincinnati Kid and Maverick shoot those films in the foot. "Casino" is just, well, stupid ("fact-based", my ass), though it does show how an otherwise shrewd and perceptive man can have his brain shorted out by his dick.

I liked the scene in "Starman" where Jeff Bridge's character tweaks a slot machine to get a jackpot. People tried this with magnets for years :)

I also liked the casino scenes in "National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation" because the way Clark Griswold got treated every time he stepped up to the table seemed, in some way, brutally realistic.

As far as poker scenes go, I love the railroad car poker game in "The Sting". The battle of the cheats--and you NEVER see the result coming.

And not that it's a gambling movie per se, but the people who wrote and produced "Leaving Las Vegas" should be boiled alive. Characters such as those have never existed, and never will exist, in human history.

AZ -- I forgot about the Casino scene with Joe Pesci at the 21 table. That has to be my absolute favorite gambling scene, because it shows somebody losing, and getting angry! Now THAT'S realism.

The Sting is an all-around terrific movie. Nothing in that movie is bad -- probably one of the best movies of the century and definitely the best gambling movie. A often-forgotten scene in that movie is in the first reel when Robert Redford's character is cheated at roulette in the back-alley casino.

Another good movie that shows the losing side of gambling is Owning Mahoney. There is not a lot of actual gaming action in that film, though, except for the last couple scenes (which were changed from the book/real story, btw).

The final card scene in Casino Royale, where Bond and everybody get the best hands possible. Yeah, right.. I thought the Hangover was hilarious, I saw it twice.

Off the top of my head, my favorite is the sewer craps scene in "Guys and Dolls" where Big Jule uses dice with no spots. That scene has everything - craps, big action, and one of the best gambling songs ever written ("Luck Be a Lady").

Don't forget The Color of Money (and its comedic cousin Kingpin). I loved the part at the end when Vincent (Tom Cruise) bet against himself, and let Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) beat him in the pool tournament. If I remember correctly the pool tournament was in Atlantic City.

Bill Murray is just hilarious in Kingpin.

Quote: teddys

The Sting is an all-around terrific movie. Nothing in that movie is bad -- probably one of the best movies of the century and definitely the best gambling movie.

Yep. GREAT gambling movie. As a poker player, I particularly LOVE the scene with the poker game on the train.

The thing that bothers me is when it gets mentioned, other poker players will point out the rules that are being broken, particularly, string bets. It's VERY common for Hollywood to use the phrase "I see your bet and raise you..." That's a string bet and against the rules.

However, since the two big players in that game were both cheating, and Paul Newman's character was pretending to be something of a novice, I think doing the string bet was just part of the act. Very nicely done.

My favorite gambling movie is one that often gets overlooked: "Let it Ride".

No outrageous stakes, no professional gamblers with shady pasts, no violence, no drugs, no impossible heads-up pat hands, no seedy backrooms, no depressing undercurrents. Just a bunch of regular guys hanging out at a neighborhood bar, enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime kind of day.

I also like "A Big Hand for the Little Lady".

C'mon, how can you forget about:

Swingers, which painfully reminded me of my first few trips to casinos (Lake Tahoe, mostly) where losing $2 a hand seemed like all the money in the world! Mikey lost a few hundy, but still ...

Rounders, the scene where Mike McD beat Johnny Chan heads-up. Yes, it's cheesy, but don't tell me that ALL of you would like to do that to a poker superstar (especially Jamie Gold, who remains the only player on the planet whom I would slow-roll).

Ocean's 12, I think, where the lady wins a jackpot as a distraction, and the security checks they do on her (heart rate, dialated pupils, etc.) to see if she reacts the way a jackpot winner would react. Not exciting, but definitely interesting ... do they really do that?

Was it the original Casino Royale where they had the baccarat scene? I thought the original was a comedy ...

Quote: ItsCalledSoccer

Was it the original Casino Royale where they had the baccarat scene? I thought the original was a comedy ...

Yep. Great baccarat scene between Peter Sellers and Orson Welles. Peter Seller's character has a system book! It also is a great depiction of the rules of the original "chemin du fer."

The best "scene" has got to be from Vegas Vacation where Clark and Cousin Eddie go to the cheap "Casino" where they have the stupidest games: "Pick a Number Between 1 and 10", "Rock, Paper, Scissors", "Guess Which Hand", "Coin Toss" and, "War". I was floored when I saw the actual game, at the Wynn no less.

Movies that deal with sports betting tend to feel very realistic, since everyone who bets sports can remember the games they thought they had locked up, only to have something horribly improbable happen (e.g Chris Duhon's "meaningless" half court shot in the 2004 NCAAs). So when they break out the black swan event in the movie, it's typically relatable.

That said, "Two for the Money" with Al Pacino and Matthew McConaughey was really terrible.