In 2004’s The Card Player, a serial killer is haunting the streets of Rome. He’s abducting women and then taunting the police by demanding that they play online poker with him. If the police win a hand, the woman goes free. If the police lose, the woman is tortured and killed on a webcam. Unfortunately, it turns out that the police are lousy at playing poker. Actually, they’re lousy at just about everything. Whenever I watch The Card Player, I find myself imagining that I’m watching an episode of Law & Order: Remedial Police Unit. That’s a spin-off from the original Law & Order. It features incompetent, poorly trained detectives who are constantly forgetting to Mirandize suspects. I’m surprised that no one else has ever seen it.
There are two cops who are slightly competent. Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) is the daughter of a man who wrote a book about how to play poker. (Hey, that might be helpful!) John Brennan (Liam Cunningham) is a tough Irish cop who is sent to Italy after the Card Player kills two British tourists. While the rest of the police force stands around and stares at the office computer all day, Anna Mari and Brennan actually try to track the killer down.
Oh, The Card Player. This film is often cited as being Dario Argento’s worst. To be honest, I think that’s a bit of an overreaction. The film’s not so much bad as it’s just kind of boring. It plays out like a police procedural and there’s little of Argento’s signature visual flair. There are way too many shots of people staring at screens with serious expressions on their faces. Like so many other directors before him, Argento struggles to find a way to make watching someone else play an online game interesting. Eventually, the police do win a hand and I cringed as all of the extras in the police station broke out into cheers. It felt corny and a bit silly. It definitely did not feel like Argento.
That said, the murders are memorably gruesome and the scenes where the bodies are recovered and then examined in the morgue are pure nightmare fuel. Argento tosses in a dancing coroner who takes way too much pleasure in discussing things like the cause of death. The sight of the coroner dancing brings to mind the moment in Tenebrae where John Saxon is stabbed in public and none of the witnesses seem to be particularly disturbed. There’s a chilling callousness to the moment and a reminder of why Argento often portrays insects as being more trustworthy and empathetic than humans. Stefania Rocca gives a good performance in a role that was originally meant to be played by Asia Argento. Liam Cunningham is today known more for his political vacuousness than his acting talent but he’s still believably rugged and cynical as Brennan.
Finally, the film’s depiction of online poker is very much a late-90s version of the Internet. Everything loads slowly, the graphics are awkward and stiff, and the whole thing projects a feeling of “Can you believe people actually pay for this?” Seen in 2026, it’s actually kind of charming. The old internet was so dorky that it was impossible not to love it.
The Card Player is pretty forgettable, especially when compared to Argento’s earlier films or, for that matter, a film like Sleepless. It’s not as bad as some say but it’s definitely not top-rate Argento.
The (Reviewed) Films of Dario Argento:
