Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74959 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-05-14
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 93 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
An entry in the recent rash of crooks-falling-out cynical crime-comedy noirs, Four Dogs Playing Poker opens with a robbery at a wedding in Buenos Aires. Five friends pose as staff and guests to penetrate the secret collector's vault of lecherous father-of-the-bride George Lazenby and walk away with a valuable dancing-girl statue. Back in Los Angeles, the team are visited by their sponsor, hefty guest-star crook Forrest Whitaker, who tells them there's a question as to whether the statue is on the ship that's supposed to be smuggling it into the country. If it doesn't show up they'll have to cough up a million dollars between them or get killed. To underline the point and in the first of many "it-just-doesn't-make-sense" plot turns, Whitaker has his men shoot Tim Curry, organiser of the gang, in the leg and then, to show that trying to leave town is a bad idea, has him hung up dead in a meat locker with his feet chain sawed off (offscreen) by the comedy British double-act thugs. An unbelievably complicated scheme is hatched between the surviving four, two couples, whereby they each take out insurance policies that benefit the rest and pick cards and safety-deposit box-keys that identify one of them as the designated murderer and another as a victim. Naturally, suspicions simmer (one character, when asked if she distrusts her friends, replies "all my friends are thieves") and triple-crosses are hatched. The prolific Olivia Williams, in Lulu wig and American accent, emerges as the star, walking a knife-edge between imperilled heroine and cynical manipulator but she is ably supported by druggie, computer savvy Daniel London, hunky bartender Balthazar Getty and jittery insurance functionary Stacy Edwards. Familiar, if watchable. --Kim Newman

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

Trailer
Animated & Scored Menus
Scene Access
English Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0

Synopsis
Four friends get in over their heads when they try to make a bigtime heist. They pull off the job, stealing a small, but priceless sculpture. Immediately, the sculpture is missing and the novice group of thieves find themselves burdened with a debt to a crime lord that they cannot pay. Their desperate attempt at saving at least some of their lives is to have each member of the crew take out a $1 million life insurance policy. Each then draws a playing card that will designate whose life is to be spared in order to pay the crime boss and allow the others to live.