''The Card Player'' (Italian: ''Il cartaio'') is a 2004

giallo In Italian cinema, ''Giallo'' (; plural ''gialli'', from ''giallo'', Italian for yellow) is a genre of mystery fiction and thrillers that often contains slasher, crime fiction, psychological thriller, psychological horror, sexploitation, and, ...

film directed by Dario Argento. The film stars Stefania Rocca and

Liam Cunningham Liam Cunningham (born 2 June 1961) is an Irish actor. He is known for playing Davos Seaworth in the HBO epic-fantasy series ''Game of Thrones''. Cunningham has been nominated for the London Film Critics' Circle Award, the British Independe ...

and is Argento's second giallo feature of the decade (following '' Sleepless''). The film features a brief role by Fiore Argento, the director's eldest daughter. She had previously appeared in her father's films '' Phenomena'' and '' Demons''.

Plot

The film centers around a serial killer known as "The Card Player", who is kidnapping young women in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

. Using a

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set-up, the killer challenges the police by forcing them to play hands of Internet poker. If the police lose, the kidnapped victim is tortured and murdered on-screen. When a British tourist is among the girls murdered, policeman John Brennan (Cunningham) is assigned the case and quickly teams up with Italian detective Anna Mari (Rocca). The duo have their work cut out for them when the Police Chief's daughter (Argento) becomes the killer's latest kidnapping victim.

Cast

* Stefania Rocca as Anna Mari *

as John Brennan * Silvio Muccino as Remo *

Adalberto Maria Merli Adalberto Maria Merli (born 14 January 1938) is an Italian actor and voice actor. Biography Born in Rome, Merli is active on film and television and he has appeared in over 27 films since 1965. He had his breakout role in the 1968 RAI televis ...

as the Police Commissioner *Fiore Argento as Lucia Marini *

Cosimo Fusco Cosimo Massimo Fusco (born 23 September 1962) is an Italian actor. Biography Born in Matera, Italy, Fusco was educated in Los Angeles, Rome, and Paris. He is best known for his role as Paolo, one of Rachel's boyfriends in the American sitcom ...

as Berardelli *Mia Benedetta as Francesca *Giovanni Visentin as C.I.D. Chief * Vera Gemma as Third Victim

Production

Originally conceived as a sequel to the director's own

The Stendhal Syndrome ''The Stendhal Syndrome'' ''(Ital. La Sindrome di Stendhal)'' is a 1996 Italian Giallo film written and directed by Dario Argento and starring his daughter Asia Argento, with Thomas Kretschmann and Marco Leonardi. It was the first Italian film t ...

to be titled ''In the Dark'', the film was rewritten when that film's star,

Asia Argento Asia Argento (; born Aria Maria Vittoria Rossa Argento; 20 September 1975) is an Italian actress and filmmaker. The daughter of filmmaker Dario Argento, she has had roles in several of her father's features and achieved mainstream success with ...

, declined to be involved. The setting was changed from Venice to Rome to bring costs down and recapture the feel of Argento's early giallo,

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage ''The Bird with the Crystal Plumage'' () is a 1970 giallo film directed by Dario Argento, in his directorial debut. The film has been credited with popularizing giallo, an Italian genre of thriller developed in the 1960s. It is the first in what ...

. The director said: "My fans love it when I shoot in Rome. The city is the most wonderful film set ever, like a dusty museum with its cocktail of rundown buildings and beautiful open spaces."

Release

The film was released in Italy in January 2004. In the United States, following a small number of cinema screenings, it was released on DVD by

Anchor Bay Entertainment Anchor Bay Entertainment (formerly Video Treasures and Starmaker Entertainment) was an American home entertainment and production company. It was a subsidiary of Starz Inc. Anchor Bay Entertainment marketed and sold feature films, television se ...

later that year. The film premiered on DVD in the UK in October 2004, after receiving a 15 certificate from the

BBFC The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of fi ...

Critical reception

''The Card Player'' received a negative response from critics. The film has an approval rating of 20% on movie

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website

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, based on ten reviews. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' wrote, "''The Card Player'' ..doesn't break the unhappy streak of his rgento'slater films. Though it's based on a promisingly outrageous premise ..the film unfolds as a tired, thoroughly conventional police procedural that might as well be titled '' CSI: Roma''." AllMovie's review was unfavorable, writing, "''The Card Player'' offers a fair amount of suspense and at least one memorable

set piece In film production, a set piece is a scene or sequence of scenes whose execution requires complex logistical planning and considerable expenditure of money. The term is often also used more broadly to describe a sequence in which the film-maker's ...

, but for those even remotely familiar with Argento's canon, there's the feeling that it's all been done before – and handled with much more style and confidence."

Maitland McDonagh Maitland McDonagh () is an American film critic and the author of several books about cinema. She is the author of ''Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento'' (1991) and works of erotic fiction and erotic cinema, as well ...

also gave the film a negative review, criticizing the screenplay for being "perfunctory" and for going "to so little trouble to hide the killer's identity that even inattentive viewers will know who's to blame long before the police figure it out."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Card Player, The 2004 films 2000s serial killer films 2000s Italian-language films 2004 horror films Films set in Rome Giallo films Films scored by Claudio Simonetti Police detective films Films directed by Dario Argento Italian serial killer films 2000s mystery films 2004 crime thriller films Films with screenplays by Dario Argento Films about snuff films Films about gambling 2000s English-language films