Runner Runner turned out to be a pretty good film, in the plot of which poker is far from the only role. Script Writers have stated that Runner Runner will by no means be like Rounders 2, and they did not lie. If my memory serves me right, for the entire 91 minutes of the picture, not a single poker hand was shown to us. Runner Runner Gaming. If you like to socialize and play cards we have a seat for you. We offer No Limit Omaha Hi/Lo 8 or better and No Limit Holdem cash and tournaments.

Runner Runner is a 2013 American crimethriller film directed by Brad Furman, written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien and starring Justin Timberlake, Ben Affleck, Gemma Arterton and Anthony Mackie.

Some parts of this narrative are based on the life of Nat Arem,^[4] a professional poker player and former accountant at Deloitte Touche who helped uncover cheating^[5] in online poker by using statistical methods^[6] to analyze thousands of games. The film was released in the United States on October 4, 2013, received generally negative reviews from critics and grossed $62 million.^[7]

Plot[edit]

Richie Furst used to have a lucrative career on Wall Street; this history prevents him from receiving tuition assistance at Princeton, so he funds his master's degree by referring students to online gambling, for which he receives a cut. After the dean threatens to expel him for these activities, Richie tries to win his tuition using his excellent poker skills in online gambling, but he loses all his money to a cheater, something he is able to prove by statistics.

Richie travels to Costa Rica to confront Ivan Block, who runs the biggest empire of online gambling websites in the world, including the one Richie lost his money on. After Ivan sees the statistics, he finds that coders have coded the software to allow them to cheat. After firing those involved, Ivan tells Richie he'll pay him millions per year to stay in Costa Rica and assist with the site.

Richie slowly begins a romantic relationship with Rebecca Shafran, ex-lover of Ivan, who appears to have no objections. Ivan has Richie blackmail a gaming affiliate with videos of his infidelity to force him to sign with Ivan. FBI Agent Shavers kidnaps Richie and threatens to ruin his life in various ways if he does not assist in getting Ivan convicted. Shavers cannot do anything legally as he has no authority in Costa Rica, but he takes advantage of this to use tactics that would be illegal and unethical for law enforcement inside the U.S. Ivan tells Richie that everyone in the organization ends up confronted by Shavers at some point.

Over time, Ivan's organization is revealed to be less than ethical. He sends Richie to bribe Costa Rica gaming director Herrera with too small a payment, which leads to Richie being beaten. Ivan tells him it comes with the territory of such a lucrative career. When Richie tries to leave the country, Shavers has drugs planted in his bag and offers to overlook it if Richie agrees to cooperate. A local police officer reveals that the police dislike Ivan but that he would buy his way out of any trouble and destroy whoever tried to take him down.

Richie's friend Andrew Cronin, who works on the software design for Ivan, suggests that Ivan is running a Ponzi scheme; the players' accounts have no actual money, and Ivan uses the money as his own bank account, keeping just enough to allow players to cash out when they need to. Aware that Richie might be wanting out, Ivan buys the massive poker debts of Richie's father and brings him to Costa Rica, using him as a hostage.

Ivan throws Herrera and his bodyguard into the river to get eaten by the crocodiles, but pulls them out before they are eaten. Cronin disappears and is later found nearly beaten to death. Thanks to Rebecca betraying Ivan, Richie finds out that he has been setting him up all along; Ivan is about to move his operations out of Costa Rica, planning to leave Richie behind as the fall guy. Richie gives out massive bribes to local officials, including low-level police officers. When the moving day hits, Ivan calls to sarcastically apologize to Richie, telling him he will be busted, as Ivan flies away on a private jet.

When Ivan lands, he finds he has been betrayed: the bribed pilot has instead flown him to Puerto Rico, an American territory. Shavers and other FBI agents move in to arrest him as Richie and Rebecca fly away on the private jet. Shavers says they're free to go because Richie left a flash drive for him containing sufficient evidence to convict Ivan.

Cast[edit]

• Justin Timberlake as Richie Furst
• Gemma Arterton as Rebecca Shafran
• Anthony Mackie as Agent Shavers
• Ben Affleck as Ivan Block
• Michael Esper as Billy 'Pet' Petricoff
• Oliver Cooper as Andrew Cronin
• Christian George as Wilson
• Yul Vazquez as Delegate Herrera
• John Heard as Harry Furst
• James Molina as Esteban
• Louis Lombardi as Archie
• Vincent Laresca as Sergeant Barrancas
• Bernie O. Ramos Robledo as Handlebar Mustache
• Sam Palladio as Shecky
• David Costabile as Professor Hornstein
• Jordan Beder as Paul Arnaud
• Bob Gunton as Dean Alex Monroe
• Ben Schwartz as Craig
• Dayo Okeniyi as Lionel

Production[edit]

Principal photography took place in the summer through the winter of 2012 in Puerto Rico and on the Princeton University campus.^[8][9][10] Despite the fact the film has several graphic indications that all events are taking place in Costa Rica none of the scenes were shot in the Central America nation.

Reception[edit]

Box office[edit]

In its opening weekend, the film came in third place with $7.8 million^[3] behind Gravity and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. It grossed $19.3 million in North America and $43.4 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $62.7 million.^[3]

Critical response[edit]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 7% based on 121 reviews, with an average rating of 4.1/10. The website's critical consensus reads, 'It has an impressive cast and an intriguing premise, but Runner Runner wastes them on a bland, haphazardly assembled thriller with very little payoff.'^[11] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 36 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating 'generally unfavorable reviews'.^[7] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of 'C' on an A+ to F scale.^[12]

References[edit]

1. ^'RUNNER RUNNER (15)'. 20th Century Fox. British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved August 22, 2013.
2. ^Brian Gallagher (April 14, 2012). 'Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake Team for Runner Runner'. MovieWeb.
3. ^ ^abcdRunner Runner at Box Office Mojo
4. ^Arem, Nat. 'Post Trip Update'. natarem.com. Archived from the original on November 19, 2013. Retrieved November 27, 2013.
5. ^'Key Players: Poker Scandal'. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 27, 2013.
6. ^Arem, Nat. 'Absolute Poker Cheating Scandal'. Natarem.com. Archived from the original on March 13, 2008. Retrieved November 27, 2013.
7. ^ ^ab'Runner Runner reviews'. Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
8. ^Knapp, Krystal (December 13, 2012). 'Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck in Princeton for Filming of Runner Runner Tomorrow'. Planet Princeton. Retrieved June 16, 2013.
9. ^''Runner Runner', starring Justin Timberlake & Ben Affleck, filming in NY/NJ area this weekend'. On Location Vacations. December 10, 2012. Retrieved June 16, 2013.
10. ^Hecht, John (September 7, 2012). 'Why Hollywood Loves Puerto Rico'. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 15, 2013.
11. ^'Runner Runner (2013)'. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 18, 2020.
12. ^'CinemaScore'. cinemascore.com.

Runner Runner Poker Significado

External links[edit]

• Runner Runner on Facebook
• Runner Runner at IMDb
• Runner Runner at Box Office Mojo
• Runner Runner at Rotten Tomatoes
• Runner Runner at Metacritic

On April 25th, 2011, the DOJ went into action prosecuting United States vs. Scheinberg, and the poker world was plunged into utter disarray. Two years after the so called ‘Black Friday’, Brian Koppelman and David Levien, the writers behind Rounders, watched as their take on the Full Tilt scandal – Runner, Runner – entirely failed to make a decent go of it.

With some of the pros who were involved with Full Tilt finally beginning to show their faces at the WSOP, now seems like a good time to look at the way that story played out in the fictional realm. The general consensus is ‘not well’.

With a Metacritic score of 32 (out of 100) and a rating of 8% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, it is safe to say that it was not a resounding critical success. If the rule of thumb is that a film must make twice its budget at the box office to break even for the producers then it just about washed its face in the theaters. When you watch it, it’s both obvious why it did so badly, and also a little baffling.

The team behind it is pretty solid. Koppelman and Levien have a mixed scorecard as a writing team, but poker is their home ground – their lesser known TV show Tilt for ESPN was an entertaining enough fantasy about cheats in Vegas, and Rounders is, well, Rounders. They also wrote Runaway Jury which is a solid legal thriller. So a poker inflected thriller sounds so good, so far.

The setup for Runner, Runner is pretty solid too: graduate student, online poker pro, and gambling website affiliate, Richie Furst (played by Justin Timberlake), gets cheated online, and in trying to rectify the theft ends up working with Ivan Block, a crooked owner of the site Furst was beaten on. Block is played by Ben Affleck despite the fact that the name does suggest that a reprise of John Malkovich’s magnificent Teddy KGB accent might have been intended.

The story then follows the typical line for this genre of film. The money rolls in for JT’s character and everything looks good until suddenly it doesn’t. The cops show up and want his co-operation, Ben Affleck – who is channeling his best panto villain persona right out of Dogma – turns out to be less nice than his crimes originally suggested. Loyalties are tested, and JT finds himself in a tricky situation.

Gemma Arterton also shows up in an underwritten romantic role; seeming to instantly fall for JT, whose attempts at charm come across as weirdly creepy.

There are also some crocodiles involved.

Worse Than It Should Be, Not As Bad As It Seemed

From that set-up, script, and cast, the director, Brad Furman (best known for the fairly solid Lincoln Lawyer), ends up weaving a film that feels completely without soul. The parts do all seem to work solidly from scene to scene, even if there is nothing particularly new in them.

The dialogue is alright, the performances passable, the camera is where it needs to be to tell the story, and that story is a good one. I know it’s a good one, because I’ve seen it so many times before.

All this makes for a film that is decidedly less than the sum of its parts. In fact, ‘bland’, would be my overall description of my watching experience. Not even bad enough to be interestingly bad.

A Few Pet Peeves

Take for example the opening: we get 1) slew of helicopter shots to establish location, 2) a voice over to set the scene, and 3) further exposition delivered in the form of a montage of news reports. These are three instant warnings. The first is a visual cliche, the second when done badly is a lazy way to tell the story, and the third is both.

Which is not to say they are always, always, ALWAYS wrong, but they are often symptoms of a movie being made without too much thought.

Compare the way the voice over in Rounders is used. The other half of Batt Affmon is used to give us information about the world. In the poker scenes it gives us the thought processes, augmenting the stuff we are seeing. Elsewhere, it is matched to the actions on screen, adding to the performances or expanding on the visual action. In Runner, Runner the voice over is always abstracted, it kicks in when there is nothing much going on or when there is a generic sort of montage happening. As a result, it is working by itself; and a voice in a vacuum, that’s not cinema, that’s radio.

As for the establishing helicopter shots I’ll let Every Frame A Painting make the case regarding that in this video:

I also am the sort of person who finds movies that seem to deliberately set out to fail the Bechdel test to be annoying. Gemma Arterton is the only speaking role for a woman in the film, and her only personality traits seem to be that she used to love the villain and now she fancies the hero. Just not good enough guys.

About That Poker

For something steeped in the poker culture, it has very little poker in it, which is not a problem, particularly. It is far more about offshore gambling companies, local politics, and the financial crimes of poker site owners than it is about cards. Despite that, the gambling chat is still pretty solid. In fact, one moment where the film comes back to life for two minutes is when JT’s character decides to deal with a cocky crap shooter by fading his action and taking over the table. As he slips into salesman mode, needling banter, and talking craps talk, you suddenly see why he was cast – something of his performance in The Social Network shows through.

Runner Runner Poker App

Like Rounders, the script is comprehensible to the poker neophyte without stopping to explain terms, and the slang use is pretty slick, without the usual awkwardness that comes from a writer having picked up his poker lingo from reading an online glossary. It is a great help that Koppelman and Levien know this world from previous projects.

There are still one or two clangers in there. JT’s character knows he was cheated because some fish kept winning against him all night long. In the voice over he tells us that an evening is basically the long run. Someone should explain variance and sample sizes to him.

There are also a few odd references that make you wonder if the line is meant to be world-building or product placement. For example, according to Ben Affleck’s character, the ‘pussies at Ultimate Bet’ are pussies because they don’t cheat, and the FBI guy suggests JT leave Costa Rica and go work for Caesar’s Palace cus he’s heard, ‘that’s a nice place.’

It also calls online poker a ‘dirty little secret’ at a time when it was multi-billion dollar industry.

The ‘Likeable’ Character Problem

People often complain that they disliked something because the main character, ‘was not likeable.’ I think the complaint puts the wrong words to the feeling. We like to see unlikeable characters, Netflix’s House of Cards’ massive success is proof of that.

The real problem is other way round: likeability can save a boring character. When the character is both unlikeable and uninteresting that is death for the movie. Runner, Runner struggles with this problem: JT’s character is annoying, arrogant, and morally suspect. He creeps on women, and doesn’t have an issue bribing government officials until he gets physically hurt, when suddenly he’s all tears. None of this makes you root for him.

Unfortunately, the plot requires you to be on his side. I ended up hoping pretty much everyone would get caught and go to jail. Including the filmmakers.

When the end arrived, though not particularly clever, I was able to squeeze a little smirk of satisfaction as I finally got catharsis for the $35 dollars or so I lost when Full Tilt sank. It was the bright moment in an otherwise wasted hour and forty.

Let us know what you thought of Runner Runner in the comments.