DidntSeeIt.com

Listen, I would really like to review Deal for you, but I got all distracted by visiting the Deal website. First I couldn’t stop looking at this picture:

and then I couldn’t stop reading Burt Reynolds’ bio, which trumpets that his “commitment to his profession and devotion to education can perhaps best be exemplified by the program he created to give college students scholastic credit and wages for their work while obtaining an education at the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre (B.R.I.T.) located in Tequesta, Florida.”

I wanted to learn more about Burt’s commitment, but the Institute closed eleven years ago.

Anyways, I’d review the movie, but the official studio synopsis I found on Rotten Tomatoes is so awesome that I can’t even compete, so I’m just going to reprint it. If you’re not totally sucked in by the time you get to the jump, you are a robot. (But if you make it the whole way through, there’s a prize.)

Set against the world of high stakes poker, DEAL follows the story of TOMMY VINSON (Burt Reynolds), an ex-gambler who quit the game of Texas Hold’em over 30 years ago after missing a family emergency and swearing to his wife, HELEN, “never again”. Tommy tries to be content with his luggage business…

…but while watching a poker tournament on television, he sees someone who reminds him of his younger self, ALEX STILLMAN (Bret Harrison). Alex is a cocky, hotshot card playing senior at Yale University. He is the best player there. Alex’s parents would like him to go to law school, but Alex only dreams of playing professional poker, like the icons he sees on TV. After winning an on-line event that places him in the televised game, Alex loses early. He’s close to greatness, but what he doesn’t realize yet is that he focuses too much on the cards, and not the players…that’s where Tommy comes in. Tommy finds Alex and makes a pact with him: he’ll front Alex the high priced entry fees to all the major tournaments if Alex plays the way that Tommy wants him to. Alex resists at first, but after seeing Tommy make some impressive calls while watching a poker game together, Alex changes his mind and they partner. Alex’s parents are sick about it, and Helen, Tommy’s wife, is concerned that her husband will get sucked back into the game that took him away once before. Tommy promises Helen that this will not happen because he’s not the one playing, Alex is. But after Tommy and Alex have a falling out over a local Las Vegas call girl that Tommy arranged to meet Alex and whom Alex has developed feelings for, things change, and everything is off. Tommy, who’s now got the appetite back for the game and a hunger to be acknowledged as the best, enters the final tournament of the poker season and ends up facing Alex, his protege, in the finals of the world series of poker. And what happens there, even though only one will be declared champion, leaves them both winners. –© MGM

People in the industry are totally starting to crib my style.

Here’s your prize. It’s a picture of Burt Reynolds, Charles Durning, and what Burt will look like after his next surgery: