High Rollers Not Worth Betting On
While I was not a fan of 2024’s B-grade heist suspense thriller Cash Out, I was still willing to give a sequel the benefit of the doubt. Star John Travolta may have been slumming, but he was still having enough of a good time as notorious international thief and conman Mason Goddard that at least some of the actor’s signature charisma shone through all of the ultra-low-budget silliness. He was picking up that easy paycheck with gregarious joie de vivre.
Sadly, High Rollers, the latest endeavor centered on Mason, his goofball brother Shawn (Lukas Haas), and the remainder of his tight-knit crew, is as devoid of suspense, tension, or surprise as its strangely anemic predecessor was. While I did think a little better of this sequel than I did the prior motion picture, the difference there is still negligible. This film is a waste of time.
If Cash Out was something of an Inside Man meets Heat clone, then High Rollers is undeniably an Ocean’s 11 — or, better yet, Ocean’s 12 — variant. Months after successfully putting one over on notorious criminal mastermind Abel Salzar (Danny Pardo) and making away with his most prized possession (a digitized database outlining all of his illegal activities), Mason and his friends suddenly find themselves in a bind. Salzar has gotten the better of them, even taking Mason’s beloved former FBI agent girlfriend Amelia Decker (Gina Gershon, taking over the role from Kristin Davis) hostage to prove how hopeless their situation truly is.
But his interests aren’t as rudimentary as simple revenge. No, for the return of Decker and the erasure of all past debts, Salzar wants Mason and his team to pull off an impossible heist. This task involves another cutthroat crime lord, Zade Black (Demián Castro), and the contents of a hidden safe concealed somewhere inside his fortress-like penthouse located atop his popular Louisianna casino. Mason, Shawn, and the rest of the team will need to pull out all of the stops if they hope to succeed, and they’ll need to stay one step in front of the FBI and try to keep Salzar’s omnipresent prying eyes in the dark in the process.
The strangest thing about this sequel is how unfinished it feels. An early scene where Decker is kidnapped by armed assailants while the rest of the characters are held on an empty beach at gunpoint inexplicably transitions to Mason sitting behind the wheel of a sportscar chasing after her. While I’m no proponent of everything in a story needing to be spelled out down to the last detail, this would be an occasion where it would have been nice for some sort of visual clue showing how they all got away from the bad guys before they could rush after their abducted compadre.
It’s the first of several jarring editing decisions, however, and while many of these can likely be attributed to this project’s meager budget, that does not make them come across as any less illogical. This dilutes the narrative flow and causes a herky-jerky atmosphere I found obnoxious. The whole thing moves in backbreaking fits and starts, almost as if the person sitting at the wheel were a timidly anxious student driver who still hasn’t learned the difference between the gas pedal and the break.
But returning director Ives isn’t a newbie. He knows what he’s doing. He has an affinity for sweeping and swooping drone shots, can connect one story beat to the next with workmanlike efficiency, and even gives Castro ample freedom to create a reasonably despicable villain who is worthy of a better screenplay than this one. The filmmaker makes the most of what he has and does not seem to be daunted by any lack of financial resources that kneecapped what I imagine where many of his loftier visual and visceral storytelling ambitions.
Unfortunately, this only augments the overall discombobulation. A central poker game that the success or failure of Mason’s plan hinges on has all the energy of a midmorning dental cleaning. A third act revelation that puts the entire team in jeopardy is delivered with a whimpering “meh” instead of a thunderous “wham!” A climactic shootout is staged with zero kinetic urgency and has even less dramatic momentum.
Travolta is still having a decent time as he snags another leisurely paycheck, and Haas has a bit more to do than he did in Cash Out. Castro is better than the movie deserves, and a sequence where the team makes their play to infiltrate Salzar’s safe has a Mission: Impossible (circa the 1960s television series, not the Tom Cruise blockbuster franchise) vibe I did admittedly appreciate.
It’s all for naught, of course, but I’m sure there will be some out there where minor positives such as those will be more than enough to warrant giving High Rollers a look. Just don’t bet on it.
Film Rating: 1½ (out of 4)
