It's a film noir con movie with a much darker edge than "The Sting." It's set in the 1980s in a large U. S. city.
Margaret Ford (Lindsay Crouse) is an uptight, chain-smoking Freudian psychiatrist who doubts her ability to help people despite having a best-selling book on obsessive behavior. One day a gambling-addicted client, Billy (Steven Goldstein), threatens to kill himself with a gun in her office because of a $25,000 debt he owes Mike Mancuso (Joe Mantegna). She talks Billy down and promises to help him. She confronts Mike at the House of Games, a hole-in-wall gambling joint in a seedy part of town.
She is intrigued by Mike and agrees to help him in a con in a poker game. She is almost conned herself but discovers it before losing her money. She asks to learn more about the confidence game world and gets sucked into a much larger con with fatal consequences. By the end of the movie, Margaret is a much different person that has learned a lot about herself.
If you like film noir, this is a great movie. How Margaret gets sucked into the con is over the top, but if the viewer goes along with that, the plot twists and turns are fascinating. The only good person left at the film's end is Margaret's mentor, Dr. Littauer (Lilia Skala).
Margaret Ford (Lindsay Crouse) is an uptight, chain-smoking Freudian psychiatrist who doubts her ability to help people despite having a best-selling book on obsessive behavior. One day a gambling-addicted client, Billy (Steven Goldstein), threatens to kill himself with a gun in her office because of a $25,000 debt he owes Mike Mancuso (Joe Mantegna). She talks Billy down and promises to help him. She confronts Mike at the House of Games, a hole-in-wall gambling joint in a seedy part of town.
She is intrigued by Mike and agrees to help him in a con in a poker game. She is almost conned herself but discovers it before losing her money. She asks to learn more about the confidence game world and gets sucked into a much larger con with fatal consequences. By the end of the movie, Margaret is a much different person that has learned a lot about herself.
If you like film noir, this is a great movie. How Margaret gets sucked into the con is over the top, but if the viewer goes along with that, the plot twists and turns are fascinating. The only good person left at the film's end is Margaret's mentor, Dr. Littauer (Lilia Skala).