★½
“A load of balls.”
Oh, dear. There’s part of me which thinks this is what you get when you try and make actors out of pool players. For the star here, Barretta, is one of the top women cue artists in the world. She’s joined here by cameos from a couple of bigger pool stars i.e. people even I’ve heard of, in Jeanette ‘The Black Widow’ Lee and Allison Fisher, and you can’t really expect much out of any professional sportswomen, in terms of acting ability. However, she isn’t that bad, though this may just be relative to some of her fellow cast members. And, to be fair to the actors here, you could be an Oscar-winner, and still not be able to do anything with the wretched script, which is little more than a parade of cliches, when not being a shameless advert for the American Poolplayers Association and its leagues.
Gail (Barretta) is the daughter of a pool player, who saw Dad stabbed to death in the street in front of her house. Taken in by creepy Uncle Joey (Hanover), Gail has clearly inherited some of her father’s skills, and Joey makes her turn them to his benefit, hustling suckers for money in bars. But, of course, Gail has dreams of her own, meeting Nice Guy™ Mark (Kochanowicz), and wants to leave Joey to head out on her own as a professional player. Hence the largely pointless cameos by Lee and Fisher, advising Gail how to achieve her goal. Joey isn’t happy at the prospect of using his cash cow, and beats up Gail, who absconds with his “retirement fund”. Though initially sent to jail, he gets bailed out, and the time spent inside hasn’t exactly improved his temper.
I was really hoping for considerably more, and better filmed, pool. It’s closer to being a Lifetime TVM with occasional interludes of the sport. And on the (sporadic) occasions we see Gail in action, we mostly see her striking the cue ball, or the target ball going into the pocket – hardly ever both in the same frame. What’s the point of having one of the world’s top players in your movie, if you rarely see them making their pro-quality shots?
It all builds towards an APA team tournament in Las Vegas, which at least. is a little better in this regard. Though that only shows up in the last ten minutes, leaving precious little room for any kind of tension to built. We gallop through it, to a final shot which don’t realize is the final shot, until after it has been pocketed. Even Joey’s subplot is hustled off-screen with an absolute minimum of excitement, despite him turning up at the event with a gun. There are possibilities in the idea, which I won’t deny: after all, pool is one of the few games where men and women can compete on equal terms. But they are painfully squandered by the wretched direction and script. As bar sports action heroine movies go, I guess we’ll have to wait for the Fallon Sherrock biopic.
Dir: Anthony Palma
Star: Jennifer Barretta, Kurt Hanover, Mark Kochanowicz, Jennifer Butler