Nick is a) good-hearted and b) brutally skillful, although we don't find that out until later. He gets along by doing personal security-based odd jobs in Las Vegas, being engaged as bodyguard/company by a scared young software millionaire. This is interrupted by the fact that a showgirl ex-girlfriend has been sadistically beaten by a young mobster, and she is looking for retribution.
Jason Statham plays Nick in this film, self-scripted by William Goldman from his novel Heat, previously filmed in 1986 with Burt Reynolds. I must have seen that version, but I have no memory of it and, on the basis of Wild Card, I can understand why.
There are a number of moments in this film which are quite good. But a film is more than a number of moments, and Wild Card isn't. Narratively, it's a mess. There are three main threads - the scared young millionaire, the sadistic mobster, and Nick's own gambling/seeking to leave Vegas. These threads demand to be interwoven, but they are linked so ineffectively that they end up as isolated elements of Nick's life (reflected in the fact that various well-known cast members turn up to deliver half a dozen lines then disappear). If the film had thrown in Nick's trumpet lessons and a telephone call to his aunt in Hastings, they would have seemed no more disconnected from each other.
So this is OK, but it really could have done with something much stronger as a story.
Jason Statham plays Nick in this film, self-scripted by William Goldman from his novel Heat, previously filmed in 1986 with Burt Reynolds. I must have seen that version, but I have no memory of it and, on the basis of Wild Card, I can understand why.
There are a number of moments in this film which are quite good. But a film is more than a number of moments, and Wild Card isn't. Narratively, it's a mess. There are three main threads - the scared young millionaire, the sadistic mobster, and Nick's own gambling/seeking to leave Vegas. These threads demand to be interwoven, but they are linked so ineffectively that they end up as isolated elements of Nick's life (reflected in the fact that various well-known cast members turn up to deliver half a dozen lines then disappear). If the film had thrown in Nick's trumpet lessons and a telephone call to his aunt in Hastings, they would have seemed no more disconnected from each other.
So this is OK, but it really could have done with something much stronger as a story.