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Extraction, USA

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Extraction 1Here’s the good news: aside from the similar title, there’s no confusing the low-budget, quasi-billiards movie Extraction, USA with the $65 million Chris Hemsworth one-man-army action movie Extraction. In fact, the sum of the “action” in Extraction USA is a man getting beaned in the head with a billiard ball. 

Here’s the bad news: if you thought Extraction was a painful watch (and I’m not referring to all the literal pain Hemsworth afflicts on the Bangladeshi hooligans and drug lords), then you’re in for a difficult 90 minutes with Extraction, USA.

Directed by Mike Yonts and released on Tubi last November, Extraction, USA tells the story of Marni (Leanne Johnson), a single mother, and Steph (Marlee Carpenter), a mysterious drifter, who initially connect by hustling pool and then form a romantic relationship that is tested through the discovery of an underground drug ring. Underpinning all their sharking and derring-do is an urgent need to escape Extraction, the metonymic town named for the industry that supports it, and start a new life far, far away.

The industry, whether it’s fracking or something comparable, contaminates the air and water, creating an urban stink and making the city borderline unlivable and mostly impoverished. The typical lament is that there are a “few extraction millionaires and the rest of us fighting over the scraps.” Against this polluted backdrop, it’s no wonder that Leanne hustles pool for a few extra dollars so she can keep her son in school and avoid having him become a “muck kid.” 

Extraction, USAThen, along comes Steph, a platinum-haired gypsy, whose sojourn somehow has led her to the Time Out Lounge in middle-of-nowhere Extraction, and it’s love at first break. The chemistry dials up to 11 quickly, and pretty soon our sapphic duo are living together, telling lies to Marni’s uber-gullible son, sneaking into deep-pocket pool games, and eventually planning a heist to steal some drugs that “are like rocket fuel for the mucks” to get them to work harder.

Plotwise, it’s preposterous, but nothing is as absurd as the pool-training and pool-playing sprinkled throughout the first half of the film. After learning that Leanne is the best player in town, Steph trounces her and then becomes her Fast Eddie coach, showing her how to make… wait for it… straight-on shots. It’s Pool For Dummies, with high fives abounding after the simplest of shots. In case the nod to The Color of Money was missed, Leanne quotes Paul Newman’s character on two different occasions: “money won is twice as sweet as money earned.”

The games involving hustling are nominally more interesting, solely because of “quake rules” (i.e., if there is a tremor caused by a local extraction and the balls move, they’re played wherever they land). But, those games are filmed unimaginatively, with a sole jump shot breaking the monotony.  (I don’t know how much Tammy “Lefty61935” Anderson, the credited “billiards trainer” earned for this film, but she was overpaid.)

It’s not that Extraction, USA lacks heart or grit. The makers of the film said it was “one of the toughest tasks any of us ever attempted. Like most indie film crews, we put in some long days and endured all sorts of uncertainty about locations, vehicles, and funding.” 

But, shoestring budgets can yield great films. Look at Rocky or Mad Max or Halloween.(1) So, that’s a challenge to conquer, but not the underlying issue.

Extraction 2Rather, it’s the film’s desire to be a little of everything that ultimately turns it into a mishmash of nothing.  Per the makers, “On one level the film is about crime and action, but if you look a little deeper, it says some interesting things about income inequality, the environment, and men and women in the workplace.” 

Therein lies the problem. Extraction, USA triples-down on its multitude of identities. Go to the movie’s website, and the three themes (or “flavors”) – heist, romance, dramedy – are highlighted, each with its own movie poster.

In the zeal to genre-bend and create a movie that is intended to appeal to multiple types of viewers, Extraction USA fumbles through its competing storylines, short changing any real dramatic tension or character evolution.  And by making billiards seminal to the story’s arc, without investing in making the billiards remotely realistic or interesting, the movie completely fizzles, leaving just the stench of extraction in the air.
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  1. Rocky (1976) was made for $1 million and brought in $225 million worldwide. The franchise has grossed $1.9 billion. Mad Max (1979) cost $300,000 and hauled in $100 million. Halloween (1978) was created for $300,000 and raked in over $70 million worldwide. (source: Collider.com)

The Player: Released At Last!

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When Heinrich Schliemann discovered Troy in the 1870s, observers were disappointed that the archaeological site’s grandeur did not align with its portrayal in Homer’s Iliad. When Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb in 1922, many were initially underwhelmed by its small size, and later, by its absence of secret chambers. 

Sometimes, reality falls well short of expectation.

The Player - billiards moviesThat’s certainly the truth behind the recent discovery of The Player, a billiards movie released in November 1971 and considered forever lost. For more than 50 years, billiards enthusiasts have talked about the legendary film, starring Minnesota Fats as “the greatest pool hustler in the greatest pool movie.” The film was the El Dorado of the billiards film genre, often discussed but rarely, if ever, seen, except by a select few who may have viewed it during the one week it played at one of a handful of Ogden-Perry Theatres half a century ago.

Like so many others, I had devoted considerable time to tracking down the film. I even discovered a two-minute trailer. It was like staring at a blurred photo of a head emerging from Loch Ness – proof of an existence just beyond grasp, or maybe a hoax about a film that was never finished. But, ultimately, all my sleuthing proved fruitless, all my leads were dead-ends, and I discontinued the search about 10 years ago. It was the opinion of this billiards film historian that The Player was gone for good.

That denouement – that acceptance of truth – was detonated two months ago when the folks at FT Depot, a film restoration community, dropped a billiards bomb by unexpectedly releasing the complete version of The Player, available here.

The story of that release, which is discussed in detail on the YouTube site, is infinitely more engaging and entertaining than the actual movie. An abandoned print, a delinquent drive-in operator, a storage room filled with rain puddles, Vinegar Syndrome, physical distortion – it’s a cinematic billiards miracle, a feat almost as incredible as Willie Mosconi’s 526-ball run or Efren Reyes’ history-making Z-shot at the 1995 Sands Regency 9-Ball Open.

As for The Player, it’s hard to overstate the awfulness of this film. 

The Player - billiards movieCreated as a decade-late response to The Hustler, which starred Jackie Gleason as the fictional, corpulent pool shark Minnesota Fats, Thomas DeMartini’s The Player featured the real Minnesota Fats (aka Rudolf Wanderone) in his film debut. Though Fats was central to the film’s marketing, he only appears in three scenes, all of which basically consist of him, playing himself, sauntering around the table, knocking in balls and making dazzling trick shots.

The rest of the movie focuses on a respected pool player Lou Marchesi, whose life begins to crumble through his association with Sylvia, a beautiful and sophisticated woman who refuses to understand or accept his way of life. 

The movie largely ping pongs between uninterrupted matches of 9-ball, 14.1, and one-pocket, primarily filmed at the former Shopper’s Pool Room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and cringe worthy scenes between Lou and Sylvia. The characters are wooden, the script is soporific, the drama is turgid, the pacing is terrible, the filming is poor, and there are almost two relentless hours of reusing the same musical riffs, with the sole exception being the inclusion of Shorty Rogers’ jazzy tune, “The Player.” 

Fats is, by far, the most entertaining aspect of the movie, which says something given his limited screen time and lack of acting. (He does have one of the film’s best lines, when he expresses concern to Lou about his overbearing girlfriend and deadpans, “you better dust this tomato off.”) 

Throughout the 1960s, producers had allegedly approached Fats about making another great pool movie to follow on the success of The Hustler. He turned down many scripts until he found one that was perfect and realistic with The Player. 

I’m pretty sure that story is bogus, but like so much with Fats, who is famous for claiming that Jackie Gleason’s character (created by Walter Tevis) was modeled after him, sometimes the fiction is more entertaining than the facts.

That’s also the story of The Player, a film whose mythology has proven to be far more interesting than its actual content. As appreciative as I am to the technical wizards at FT Depot, I can’t help but wonder if this film was better left in that storage room, shrouded in mystique and deserving not to see another day.

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Sixball

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If you’re not familiar with the rules of the Korean billiards game sixball, you’re not alone. It’s rarely mentioned as one of the standard variants of carom billiards, and even among Koreans, it takes a backseat to its far more popular cousin fourball.  In fact, until I stumbled across a decade-old post on AZ Billiards Forum about the game, I wasn’t sure it was real. But, while the rules may still be opaque to me, the game clearly exists, which makes Sixball, the latest entry into the billiards movie canon, all the more interesting and enjoyable.

Perhaps anticipating that movie viewers would be unfamiliar with the sport, the film opens with a voice-over overview of the rules (and what I can only imagine is a tip of the hat to Martin Scorsese, who used the same technique 36 years ago to describe nineball in the opening scene of The Color of Money.)

    1. First, memorize the point value of your card.
    2. Once each player’s card is set, the game begins. The goal is to use the six balls to make shots that continually lower your total points until you perfectly land on the point value of your card.
    3. When the first shot hits the black ball, and then collides with the other colored balls, each worth different points, points for the ball hit will be dropped.
    4. But, if you miss the black ball, of if you hit multiple colors in the same turn, then you lose your turn. Avoid these mistakes to keep dropping points.
    5. Your final point total has to match the points on your card. That’s the only way to win.

Released in May 2020, this South Korean feature-length film from director Chae Ki-jun focuses on Sung-hoon (Lee Dae-han), a one-time aspiring professional billiards player whose dreams were shattered (and hand was broken) after getting cheated in a game of sixball by the gangster Mr. Yong (Hong Dal-pyo).

Retired from the sport, Sung-hoon is eventually lured back to billiards by his friend, who promises him the opportunity to make easy money betting in doubles billiards. As the winnings come in, Sung-hoon attracts the attention of a local pool hall house manager, Ms. Kim (Kang Ye-bin), who recruits him to be part of her stable of players. Unbeknownst to Sung-hoon, Ms. Kim works for Mr. Yong. So, when Sung-hoon prioritizes a former love interest over an easy billiards mark, leaving Ms. Kim holding the debt, it is Mr. Yong who steps in seeking reparations. And it is Sung-yoon who finds himself with the perfect revenge opportunity, if he can survive his billiards match. The Korean trailer is available to watch here.

The plot is so formulaic it’s almost risible, but as someone who’s watched my share of straight-to-TV, 2AM, gangster revenge films, I’m not complaining. And Sixball makes a few bets that pay off.

First, Sixball is all about billiards. Sure, there’s a budding, uninteresting love story happening in the shadows, but the billiards is front and center.  The game of sixball bookends the film, while the middle is packed with straight rail carom billiards matches.  Since the sport is played on a pocketless table, the movie cannot rely on the standard flash of balls getting pocketed in rapid succession or multi-ball trick shots; instead, attention is paid to nuanced single shots in which the cue ball adroitly makes contact with the two object balls.

Sixball also succeeds in making the gangster Mr. Yong a truly memorable and brutal on-screen villain. If you still get shivers thinking about Le Chiffre punishing the testicles of James Bond in Casino Royale; if you shudder picturing Dr. Szell perform dental torture on Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man; if you get disturbing flashbacks of Derek Vinyard stomping an unsuspecting black man’s teeth into the pavement in American History X; then prepare to turn away as Mr. Yong performs a horrifying form of billiards torment on another sixball loser.  I’m still hearing the sound of teeth breaking.

The movie also layers on the voyeurism and fetishism of women, whose décolletage and skintight micro-skirts feature almost prominently as the billiards.  Most of this is for show, especially if it means our hormonal billiards studs may occasionally miss a shot as they are distracted by these pneumatic women. But, they are also portrayed as very capable billiards players; in fact, Sung-hoon’s final revenge requires convincing his love interest to pick up a cue stick once more.

Speaking of the climax, while there is never any doubt about the outcome of the final match, it is well-executed, including one jaw-dropper of a shot, and brings a satisfying conclusion both to Mr. Yong’s reign and to the film.

Sixball is available to stream for on AmazonPrime.

Walkaway Joe

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It’s not just Joe who should walk away.  It’s anyone who had reasonable hopes that the pairing of estimable actors Jeffrey Dean Morgan and David Strathairn in Tom Wright’s directorial debut Walkaway Joe would make for decent, sheltered-in-place entertainment.  Unfortunately, the movie, which released on Amazon Prime earlier this month, is pretty insipid viewing. And that’s without even mentioning the billiards (more on that later).

The movie focuses on 14-year-old Dallas McCarthy (Julian Feder) who leaves home to go looking for his deadbeat, pool-hustling father Cal (Mr. Morgan).  In the search to find dad, he befriends Joe Haley (Mr. Strathairn), a loner who wanders the Louisiana highways in his Fleetwood Flair RV with his own estranged family issues haunting him.

The potential was all there: New Orleans, nine-ball, and Negan (the murderous leader of the Saviors most famously portrayed by Mr. Morgan on The Walking Dead).  With those kind of ingredients, why did Walkaway Joe stumble so badly? Let me count the ways.

First, it’s always a gamble when a movie centers on a child because you damn sure better cast the right actor. Alas, the 16-year old Mr. Feder is too inexperienced and unconvincing. He lacks the heft necessary to carry the film and portray the emotionally-wounded runaway.

Second, Michael Milillo’s script is banal and familiar, treading like a worn-out tire. I rarely quote other reviewers, but I fully agree with Christy Lemire, who writes for RogerEbert.com.  She said, “This is an overly familiar story of fathers and sons, of cycles of abandonment and years of pent-up resentments, without any fresh insight.”

Third, as someone who has spent many years living in New Orleans, I was hopeful the movie would have more of a local flavor, something akin to billiards films like The Baltimore Bullet or the still-in-production Ride the 9. But, aside from the occasional Purple Haze Abita beer sign, there is nothing about the setting that feels unique or interesting.

What’s worse is that for those familiar with the geography, Walkaway Joe introduces some ridiculous plot holes. For example, Julian and Joe appear to spend an entire day driving on the road, traveling from Fatty’s in Baton Rouge to Lacy’s Cue Sports Bar in New Orleans.  But that stretch on I-10 East is all of 80 miles.  They could have walked the distance faster.

Finally, there is the billiards, which from the movie’s poster to the opening scene to the final nine-ball tournament features prominently enough that I definitely qualify Walkaway Joe as a “billiards movie.” But, three minutes into the opening scene, my billiards queasiness was already setting in.  Julian provides an off-screen voice-over in which he describes the game, “There are all sorts of ways to hit a cue ball…but it’s where you send the cue ball next that separates you from the others.”  Really? That’s the sort of insight I expect from a Saturday morning special.

Mr. Morgan’s follow-up, narrated while he hustles someone out of a few dollars, is equally cringe worthy, “Nine-ball is succession pool…you knock them down in order.  It takes skill. More important, it takes foresight.  9-ball: the sport of kings.”

There is some playing that occurs early on, with a few nice shots, but largely the story is leading up to the 12th Annual 9-ball Open at Lacy’s. Father and son, having failed to reconcile their differences, now compete for the winner-takes-all $10,000 pot.

Mr. Morgan seems comfortable with a cue stick.  We know from a season seven Walking Dead episode, it’s not his first time at the table. (In fact, he tweeted in April that his pool skills on display were attributable to “some misspent youth finally pay[ing] off.”)  Mr. Feder, maybe less so, but credit to his coach, Louisiana local Joey Aguzin, for getting him to a reasonable level.  As Mr. Feder shared recently:

After I got the part I started training with a coach in LA and purchased a pool table so I could practice. I would play multiple hours at a time. When I went to Louisiana for preproduction, I started coaching with Joey Aguzin the pool consultant for the movie. People don’t realize how much physical and mentally demanding pool is. It’s really an incredible sport. The cool thing about all the training is I was able to do all my own shots for the film.[1]

The tournament play includes the usual montage of some movie-friendly trick shots coupled with the rapid-fire pocketing of balls, and of course, a shooting the 9-ball on the break for an instant win.  But, the final dad-versus-son game bordered on the ridiculous. The cue ball control, so lauded in the opening scene, was severely lacking, as what should have been a simple run culminated with a much higher risk bank shot for the win.

Lest my criticism be completely one-sided, I will add that Mr. Strathairn, an Oscar-nominated (Good Night, and Good Luck) and Emmy-winning (Temple Grandin) actor, can breathe life into any character and is a general joy to watch on screen.

And, the billiards scenes in Walkaway Joe, while lacking realism, did highlight the sport’s appeal and the crowd’s admiration for a well-played game.  As JB Cases posted on the AZ Billiards Forum:

I am happy for any showcasing of pool that has any small potential for causing anyone to want to start playing. Yes this shows the seedier aspects, badly, but it does also show the tournament side and admiration of a crowd for well played pool. It shows that a person can make good money playing in a tournament vs. hustling in dangerous situations. Even if that lesson was not explicit I still liked redemption through excellence message.

[1]      “Interview with Walkaway Joe star Julian Feder,” Fansided, May 19, 2020.

A Magic Stick

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A Magic Stick At the end of 2016, with seemingly no PR or marketing, mainland China officially released its first feature-length billiards movie with the airing of A Magic Stick (also known as One God Stick or in Chinese as Gēn shén gùn).[1] It’s a blessing to the country that the movie was met with complete silence, as there is next to nothing enjoyable or redeemable about this film. To say it’s a painful 71 minutes would be an understatement.

In the film, Guo Daxing is “The Billiard King,” a brash, cocky, libidinous, Bermuda-shorts wearing billiards prodigy, who is accompanied by a bevy of scantily-clad women that wait on his every word and movement. He is hesitant to risk his throne, though he also has special pool super-powers (??!) that enable him to manipulate the path of the balls. So, that’s kinda unfair, I guess.  And he brushes his teeth while his opponents take their shots, which is just plain rude.

His manager, Wu Yingxiong, has grand ambitions for the King, but the King treats him like a scorned puppy. Humiliated, Wu tricks the King into having a match with up-and-coming Zhou Bin, to whom he loses in a fluke match. This makes Zhou the new King. Guo, stripped of his title, is promptly tossed curbside, ejected from his mansion.

What could have been a mildly amusing down-on-his-luck, redemption story, however, descends into utter idiocy, as Guo tries to reclaim his title.  Helping him, sort of, is Miss Xinlan, the leader of the 3S Lady gang, who has her own reasons for trying to dispose of Wu and Zhou.  (She also tried to kill Guo earlier in the film, but that didn’t go anywhere.) Miss Xinlan is aided by her second-in-command, Teresa, a formidable billiards player, who initiates a game with Guo and then…disappears from the film.

There is also Master Huang, a retired gang leader, who is threatened by the ascendancy of the Wu/Zhou reign, but is narcoleptic, so keeps falling asleep during his moments of inspired rage.  Other characters that have the comic effect of stepping in dog shit include a blind monk, who referees the pool matches, and a salivating mermaid, who – I think – also runs some kind of an auto dealership.

I’ll be the first to admit there may be a cultural barrier too high for this Western viewer to overcome. The movie seems to be an example of mo lei tau, a type of slapstick humor popularized in late 20th century Hong Kong popular culture that includes “nonsensical parodies, juxtaposition of contrasts, sudden surprises in spoken dialogue and action and improbable and deliberate anachronisms.” A Magic Stick also makes early reference to the Chinese actor and director Stephen Chow (perhaps best known to US viewers for Kung Fu Hustle; Shaolin Soccer; and The Mermaid; as well as the billiards movie Legend of the Dragon), who helped popularize this form of movie-making.

With the story, characters, antics, and dialogue leaving me scratching my head, I was hopeful that the actual billiards sequences would compensate.  The opening credits even include a quasi-commercial for Ozone Billiards, which piqued my curiosity that Florian “Venom” Kohler would make a cameo or serve as a behind-the-scenes technical advisor. No such luck, as far as I can tell. As a result, there too, the movie failed miserably.  The pool-playing is unimaginative and often inaccurate. Little respect is given to the sport.

In the final game-winning shot, two flying kicks from opposite directions dislodge the 8-ball that had been stuck in Wuo’s mouth, causing him to vomit the ball into the pocket beneath him.

Yep, that pretty much sums up how I felt watching A Magic Stick start to finish.

[1]       This excludes Hong Kong, which has produced multiple billiards movies, including Legend of the Dragon and Equals Against Devils, as well as Taiwan, which released Second Chance.

Three Card Monte

Three Card Monte.v2Three Card Monte barely counts as a billiards movie.  But in oeuvre with very limited Canadian representation (i.e., The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II; Behind the Eight Ball; Manitoba Sharks; Hiccups – “Car Pool”), the decision to relax the definition for a little more inclusion from the Great White North seemed straightforward.  Unfortunately, the fact the film is also barely watchable has now led to some second-guessing on my end.

Released in 1978 at the Toronto Film Festival, Three Card Monte tells the story of Busher (Richard Gabourie), a gambling drifter, who begrudgingly allows Toby (Chris Langevin), a 12-year old orphan, to accompany him in his hustling and flimflammery, and builds a close relationship with him in the process.

Directed by Les Rose (Gas; Hog Wild – never heard of them?  Neither had I.), shabbily written by Mr. Gabourie, and starring a pack of unknowns and amateurs, the movie limps along across a too well-tread path of familiar tropes and clichéd two-dimensional characters.   There are two half-witted grease monkeys who chase Busher around Toronto seeking revenge for getting scammed in pool; a gaggle of equally dull-brained craps players who fail to notice Busher is playing with loaded dice; a loose hitchhiker who sleeps with Busher but is pulling her own con; and a well-intentioned hitchhiking friend who eats Twinkies and unwittingly lets a 12-year-old feel her up (?!). And, then there is Busher, who, for all his negative tendencies (e.g., lying, conning, hustling, thieving, drinking, having sex in front of a minor, kidnapping a minor, etc.), is portrayed as a genuinely good-natured guy, just trying to gain a little edge and get back on his feet.

Credibility is not the film’s calling card.

A cardinal problem with Three Card Monte is the complete lack of originality.  The film feels like a mishmash of – or maybe a paean to – superior works about the grift, specifically the movie Paper Moon (1973) and the book Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game (1978).  In Paper Moon, Ryan O’Neal stars as a Depression Era con-man who develops a partnership with a girl (Tatum O’Neal), who may be his daughter. The film had multiple Oscar nominations and won Ms. O’Neal a Supporting Oscar.  In Billy Phelan, the future Pulitzer Prize winning author William Kennedy tells the story of a young pool player and hustler who lives on the edge, making a living in Albany pool halls and card parlors.

(For what it’s worth, Mr. Gabourie won the Canadian Film Award – aka the Etrog – for Best Actor in Three Card Monte. That’s hard to believe until one is reminded by film critic Jay Smith that this particular award is “given by presenters no one knew, to recipients no one recognized, to films no one had seen.”)

Three Card MonteAs for the billiards, Three Card Monte begins on a promising note.  Busher enters a snooker hall and begins practicing on a table.  For viewers accustomed to seeing American pool on the big screen, the snooker table looms large and it’s a welcome reminder how different the game is.  Soon, two local bozos think they can make a buck off Busher and challenge him to a game.  They quickly lose their money, then their car keys, in a rapidly edited snooker sequence, consisting mainly of potted balls.  Tempers rise as Busher leaves, and the players vow revenge (though it was not clear if they were hustled or simply sucked and lost).

That opening scene sets up the whole film, as Toby allies himself with Busher (by racking his balls), and Busher (along with the voluntarily abducted Toby) goes on the lam to escape his post-snooker hustling fate. Unfortunately, though Busher is frequently carrying his cue stick and seems to be looking for his next sucker match, there is no more billiards; the subsequent hustles shift to craps and finally three card monte.  So much for that “hot cue” notably highlighted in the movie’s tagline.