Some movies make an absolute beeline for their audience. Such is the case with Deal. And this one is simple: if you're a poker buff, consider calling. If not, fold -- but quick.
Deal, a one-dimensional dip in the poker pool, doesn't use poker as a metaphor for life. It uses poker as a metaphor for poker.
Oh, it might have shuffled its way into public consciousness a few years ago, when "Texas hold 'em" was a TV phenomenon. But now, with this particular variety of poker taken much more for granted, any film about it has to stand on its own dramatic merits to break through.
Deal is not that movie.
It's a drama about high-stakes poker . So Texas hold 'em, still the most popular card game in North American casinos, is the game under the microscope.
And like a poker player in the middle of a big, crucial hand, it's interested in nothing but the outcome and won't be coming up for air until the hand's over. If then.
Burt Reynolds plays Tommy Vinson, an ex-gambler who was a major player on the professional poker circuit until his dedication to the game distracted him during a family crisis. That was twenty years ago, when he kept his wife from leaving him by promising her he'd never play again. And he hasn't.
Now he just runs his luggage business and gets his poker jollies by watching tournaments on television. That's where he spots Alex Stillman, played by Bret Harrison, a hotshot poker-playing senior at Yale University who reminds Tommy of a younger version of himself.
So Vinson contacts Stillman and offers to train him, take him on the road, back him by paying the steep entry fees to all the major tournaments, and split his winnings with him.
Members of Alex's family want him to carry on the family tradition and go to law school. But he just wants to play poker. So he antes up and joins Tommy, who teaches him to become a student of human nature.
Don't focus on the cards, he tells him, watch the players. That's where the "tells" are.
But one of Tommy's strategic training maneuvers backfires, enraging Alex to the point that he walks. This motivates Tommy to reconsider playing again.
It's a tough call, and he's risking his marriage to make it, but he decides to go all in. Which means Tommy and Alex will indeed be heading for the World Series of Poker. But not as partners -- as adversaries.
You don't have to be a poker player to know what happens.
The film's co-writer and director, Gilbert Cates Jr., tries to take a page or two from the far-superior The Color of Money, with poker instead of pool. But he fails to add anything idiosyncratic or surprising, and Scorsese, Newman, and Cruise asked to be dealt out a long time ago.
Consequently, the parade of clichés, product placements, genre conventions, and cameos by poker pros doesn't add up to more than a rainy-day curiosity.
Burt Reynolds, who was Oscar-nominated as best supporting actor for Boogie Nights only a decade ago, brings a long career's worth of experience and still has decent timing. But he can't elevate a drama that's no more involving or exciting or satisfying than sitting through a televised poker tournament watching players you don't know competing for money you can't have.
Needless to say, if you don't understand the game itself, there's not much shakin' here.
So we'll check 2 stars out of 4 for a Texas hold 'em flick that barely holds us. Even for poker aficionados, Deal is just no big deal.
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KYW movie critic Bill Wine gives his thoughts on the movies "The Men Who Stare at Goats", "A Christmas Carol" and "The Fourth Kind". (3:01)
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KYW's Steve Nikazy and KYW movie critic Bill Wine take a look at the Chris Rock documentary, "Good Hair," Michael Jackson's "This is It," and the action-crime-drama "The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day." (17:43)
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Now he just runs his luggage business and gets his poker jollies by watching tournaments on television. That's where he spots Alex Stillman, played by Bret Harrison, a hotshot poker-playing senior at Yale University who reminds Tommy of a younger version of himself. 
