Reviews

The movie was good but awfully familiar....In fact, living in Canada, there was a film called "The Last Casino" starting Charles Martin Smith as a University Professor who assembled a team of his brighter students and taught them how to count cards playing Black Jack. While certainly there were differences between the two films, I couldn't help but get the feeling I'd seen it all before. I did enjoy the acting of Jim Sturgess as the main character, and Kevin Spacey was chillingly evil. Kate Bosworth was good, but mostly eye candy. Laurence Fishburne had a good role as a Security consultant at the casino. I have to admit, the scenes where Jim Sturgess was showing his mind worked while counting the cards was ingenious. It gave the feeling that everything was slowed down and he could interpret the cards in a leisurely fashion, while in fact it was probably happening at break neck speed. The ending was satisfying.

I found First Snow to be a disappointing film. I saw a few trailers for the movie and perhaps I was anticipating something far greater than the end result. I'm not saying the movies plot wasn't interesting. It did holdmy attention; It had great scenes and the whole concept of a person knowing he was going to die at a certain time is a suspenseful way to deliver a story. I think maybe it could have been told differently. It started off with a guy (a real hustler) stranded in a New Mexico service station waiting for his car to be fixed. He accidentally (or was it fate) stumbled upon a fortune teller who told him bad things were going to happen to him. The main character (Guy Pearce) laughed it off, but then a few of his other predictions that seemed way out there came true. This caused a lot of upset and for the next few weeks of the story, Guy Pearce slowly unraveled. It finally came to light (after another visit to the fortune teller) that he would meet his tragic end upon the "First Snow". Hence, the name. The remainder of the movie became a pathetic attempt for him to find out why he was going to die, including becoming suspicious of a life long friend that he betrayed, who had just recently gotten out of prison.