Il Cartaio (The Card Player) poster & wallpaper

Stefania Rocca, Liam Cunningham, Silvio Muccino

A Rome policewoman teams up with a British Interpool agent to find a crafty serial killer whom plays a taunting game of cat-and-mouse with the police by abducting and killing young women and showing i...( read more  read more... )t over an Internet web cam.

Flixster Users

27% liked it

2,503 ratings

Unrated

Directed by: Dario Argento

Release Date: January 2, 2004

Invite friends to see

DVD Release Date: August 23, 2005

Stats: 124 reviews

Get movie widget Recommend it Add to Favorites
report incorrect info

Photos

None yet... Got one?

Your Rating


clear rating
Share on: Facebook Twitter

Flixster Reviews (124)

  • Caltiki
    April 26, 2009
    Caltiki
    Argento's biggest piece of cr*p! utterly uninspiring and soulless.

    Dario, I still LOVE you, tho! thanks for all that you gave us from 1970 to 1987...
  • FangsFirst
    March 4, 2008
    FangsFirst
    I've heard nasty, awful, bad, terrible things about Dario Argento's work after the 80s, or at least from sometime in the 90s onward and generally avoided most (if not all) of it as a result. I jumped from classics like Suspiria and Profondo Rosso straight to his rec...( read more)ent episodes of Masters of Horror, and could definitely tell something had changed, and something was very incongruous if one set those up next to his elderly works. They were, while entertaining enough, nothing that pushed me to change my stance on viewing Argento's other recent work. Considering opinions tended toward the negative pretty consistently, I stayed away. However, I stumbled across a copy of this film terribly cheap and figured--hey, what the heck, right? Four bucks? Why not?

    As per usual, it should be noted in advance that, yes, this is an Italian film, and yes it's dubbed. Period. It does appear that almost everyone in the film is/was speaking English on set for once (instead of the maddening mishmash of 70s films, where everyone spoke their native tongue), but it's still clearly dubbed all around. This can be a little distracting, and will certainly induce laughs on the parts of audiences that cannot use cultural context to suspend disbelief, or experience Argento films more as a visual or atmospherically driven work than a standard plot-driven one. However, this time we are driven by plot. This is one of the many films referenced when people decry the complete lack of originality in a recent film titled Untraceable (which actually bears its strongest resemblance to the Mllennium episode entitled "The Mikado"). Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) is an Italian policewoman (Dario likes his police and likes his heroines, so no big shock here) who is sent an unexpected e-mail asking her to join a mysterious stranger in a game of online poker, claiming he has a recently kidnapped British tourist tied up and that he will kill her. Her superior gets her into the poker chatroom but refuses to let her play, and they watch as the girl's throat is slit just offscreen through a webcam. Now, of course, we have a race against time to identify the killer as he takes on more victims, using (of course) an untraceable signal sent through routers, spoofed IPs and so on (thankfully decent as techspeak goes for this film, as it can be ruinous when they use all real terms to those of us who know things about computers and know that these terms are either irrelevant or easily defeated--though I admit I snuck in the spoofing bit myself...). A British (Irish, specifically, and yes, I'm pretty sure the British half of Ireland) detective named John (Liam Cunningham) who is disgusted by the death of the girl appears to try to bring more proactive action to the investigation--and of course to begin a romance with Anna.

    The plot is nothing overly surprising--though, as I've noted before, Argento has never been about plot, but this time that approach doesn't work. What also doesn't work are attempts to draw us into the "drama" of these card scenes, which don't seem to have the drama or suspense that they should. There is some occasionally, and that's really the best phrase to apply to the film--"there's some occasionally." There are some rather cold, uncomfortable forensic investigations of the bloated, rotten corpses of the victims (yes, the image that gives you is about right) and a few quite suspenseful chase scenes, as well as a few shocking setpieces and deaths. When one of the victims manages to wrestle her way loose on camera, that was quite effective, too. But overall something is just not clicking--and I suspect this is mostly the result of Argento dabbling in an area that doesn't work with his approach to film.

    Probably the most disappointing of all, though, was the score Claudio Simonetti (keyboardist for Goblin!) put together for the film. Apparently he had been hanging out at a bunch of raves around this time, with insistent "oomp oomp" beats and almost Squarepusher-like acid percussion (though not quite so intricate, and a little cheesier) driving the great majority, with only glimpses of his knack for ominous melody appearing every so often.

    Overall, a disappointment, but one I was somewhat prepared for. Not total garbage, but pretty heavily flawed.
  • pariahstripes
    April 25, 2009
    pariahstripes
    Amazing feature by Argento. It came out years after Susperia but kicked my senses thoroughly. A must see for Dario Argento fans, and any fans of an interesting movie. You may find it comparable to the new film "Untraceable". This is because the film untraceable is a rip off of this.
  • adarkkitten
    April 5, 2009
    adarkkitten
    Michele Soavi is one of my favourite directors. Words cannot express how much I've enjoyed his work! Soavi cites Dario Argento as a major influence. Much to my dismay, I have not been all that impressed with the Argento pieces I've seen thus far. There were a few things I found t...( read more)o like about this movie; but, on the whole, it was a huge disappointment. With the exception of a couple of forensic scenes, there was absolutely no gore present in the movie. With that in mind, I considered that perhaps the film was structured to be more of a thriller. If so, it fell short in that department as well. I didn't find it the least bit suspenseful. Quite frankly, the end of the movie sickened me. "You're pregnant!" Come on! That was totally unnecessary. Though it was borderline cheesy, I must admit that I ate up the closing scene on the train tracks. I was fascinated by how far the serial killer took his quest for a "good high" - nicely done! Still, that was not nearly enough to save this one from a poor rating!
  • kcddck
    March 26, 2009
    kcddck
    A huge disappointment from Dario Argento. No suspense, hardly any gore. There was one cool scene at the end when you see someone get run over by a train and you see what happens to the body.
  • jonnydaddy
    January 30, 2009
    jonnydaddy
    Good story but very bad acting.
  • bbliumis
    January 25, 2009
    bbliumis
    well..... its another argento weak film...
  • ellelag75
    January 12, 2009
    ellelag75
    (sing like Andy Williams' "Love Story") where do I begin, to tell the story of how suck this movie can be, a lame thriller story that is lamer than the sea, a simple truth that all the actors have bad acting....
    Where do I staaaart????"
  • bandeapartduo
    November 23, 2008
    bandeapartduo
    argento'nun s?ct?g? filmlerden...
  • fuzzymuthafuka
    October 2, 2008
    fuzzymuthafuka
    A fairly bad effort by Argento to make an American-ish gialo flick.

View All Il Cartaio (The Card Player) Reviews

Critic Reviews

No recent reviews.

Comments

This board looks lonely. Be the first to talk about "Il Cartaio (The Card Player)" !

Post A Comment | View All Comments

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

All Rotten Tomatoes content is used under license from Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes, Certified Fresh, and the Tomatometer are the trademarks of Incfusion Corporation, d/b/a Rotten Tomatoes, a subsidiary of IGN Entertainment, Inc.

Cast

More Like This

Click a thumb to vote on that suggestion, or add your own suggestions.

  • Four Flies on Grey Velvet (4 mosche di velluto grigio)
    Four Flies on Grey Velvet (4 mosche di vellut... (0%)
  • Scream
    Scream (0%)
  • Perfect Blue
    Perfect Blue (0%)
  • Dèmoni (Demons)
    Dèmoni (Demons) (0%)

More Movies like Il Cartaio (The Card Player)

Facts

No facts approved yet. Be the first

Il Cartaio (The C... : Watch Free on TV

Movie Quizzes

No quizzes for Il Cartaio (The Card Player). Want to create one?

Video Clips

No video clips yet. Want to upload one?

Meet Other Fans

Add Il Cartaio (The Card Player) to favorites

Recent News

No recent headlines. Got one?

Recent Lists

Make a List |

View All Lists

Most Popular Skin

No skins yet. Interested in creating one?