The Card Player ends up being a straight-up thriller with little to no “giallo” mixed in. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, but a gimmick that hasn’t aged well, and the lack of anything even remotely resembling the visual flair Argento are known for, did mean it had quite the job of convincing me otherwise. Especially back in 2004 where I called this the biggest turd Argento had ever pushed out. I’m not quite that harsh to it now, but this is not what I call a good film. It looks and feels like a mid-naughties cheap TV production. Not the Argento we are used to… that’s for sure.

The story is not that bad. It’s more investigation than mystery, which makes it quite different from most other Argento outings. The tension building is OK, and there are some seriously well written “scary” scenes peppered throughout. However, that doesn’t really mean much when the story could just as easily been found in one of the CSI TV series of the same era. Not necessarily a bad thing, but when it's also rather predictable, it cheapens the whole experience.

The acting is… not the best. I’m not sure which language this film was actually filmed in, but both the Italian and English tracks are quite bad… which again makes some actors seem way worse than they probably are. The only one I actually quite like is Liam Cunningham as the brooding British cop. The overacting is the thing that really kills this for me. Whether it is the dubs fault is inconsequential… It’s still horrendous to watch.

Claudio Simonetti probably tried his best with the music, but this is certainly not Simonettis best work. It’s rather plain, and I really hate the “digital” noises he keeps introducing. 8bit video game noises should not be present in a thriller.

I’m going to state this rather plainly. I don’t like The Card Player. The feeling of a cheap police procedural never really goes away, and with the level of acting and the predictable mystery, this actually stinks. Some points are given for some tension filled scenes, but other than that there’s little to like here…