Seductive and cunning as a fox, she takes an immediate liking to the handsome Goni and easily lures him away from beneath Mr. Things heat up considerably when the two men join up with one of Pyeong’s former pupils, Madame Jeong (bombshell Kim Hye-Soo). As fun as Tazza makes gambling look, it never forgets that this world isn’t a friendly one – you may win now, but everybody loses in the end. The film's requisite heavy, A-gui won’t rest until he’s chopped off the old man’s hand, if not retire him permanently from the gambling scene.
Pyeong is one of the three greatest gamblers in all of Korea, the remaining two being the sinister A-gui (Kim Yun-Seok) and the ominously named “One Ear.” A-gui is the man responsible for the latter’s missing appendages (it seems "One ear” lacks a hand, too), and A-gui’s got it bad for Mr. Pyeong is a retired card shark who has all sorts of sage advice for the young Goni. This simple act of generosity spurs Goni to seek the old man out in the hopes that he’ll become his tutor. Pyeong (Baek Yoon-Sik) decides to bail him out. Lucky for Goni, an older gambler named Mr. Along the way, his temper gets him into some trouble in an out-of-the-way gambling den. Sadly, he resorts to stealing the money his sister received in her divorce settlement, and, unsurprisingly, he loses every last cent.Īshamed at his behavior and unable to face his family, Goni embarks on a quest to find the man who scammed him and get all the money back – and then some. Unfortunately, Goni blows all the money he’s saved, and like anyone with a burgeoning gambling problem, he decides he needs to get more money to gamble with in order to dig himself out of a very deep financial hole. The game of choice is sotda, which utilizes tiny hwatu cards and looks a heck of a lot like baccarat or blackjack. One night, he naively joins an after hours card game at his workplace. And Tazza: The High Rollers definitely captures the spirit of some of the best gambling films, while still bringing to the genre a few tricks of its own.īased on a comic book by Huh Young-Man and Kim Se-Young, this award-winning 2005 film tells the story of a young man named Goni (Cho Seung-Woo) and his fateful downward spiral into the world of illegal gambling. Whether your point of reference is The Sting, God of Gamblers, Rounders, or - God help you - My Wife is a Gambling Maestro, movies about gambling can be a heck of a lot of fun. Tazza wins points for style, energy, and engaging performances from its lead actors, culminating in a fun, if somewhat overlong ride. (left) Kim Hye-Soo and (right) Cho Seung-Woo at the table in Tazza: The High Rollers.Ĭho Seung-Woo, Kim Hye-Soo, Yoo Hae-Jin, Baek Yoon-Sik, Kim Eung-Soo, Kim Sang-HoĪ young man catches the gambling bug and finds himself caught up in a freewheeling, yet increasingly dangerous conman odyssey.
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