{"id":7016,"date":"2024-02-19T17:57:41","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T22:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.muhammadamirzia.com\/armando\/?p=7016"},"modified":"2024-02-19T17:57:41","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T22:57:41","slug":"double-down-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billiardsmovies.com\/double-down-south\/","title":{"rendered":"Double Down South"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou come to shoot pool?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t come to adopt a puppy.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

That opening, sharp-tongued retort suggests viewers may be in for two hours of ratatat pool-playing. And that wouldn\u2019t be entirely wrong. <\/span>Double Down South<\/i><\/b><\/span>, which premiered at the 2022 Newport Beach Film Festival, is very much a billiards film, full of bank shots, hotshots, cheap shots, and potshots. But, if you\u2019re expecting eightball, nineball, straight pool, three-cushion billiards, sixball, <\/span>goriziana, <\/span><\/i>Russian pyramid, tenfold carom, or any of the other myriad forms of the sport which have populated the billiards film genre, then pencils out and take a seat: you\u2019ve got a new <\/span>billiards education<\/span><\/a><\/span> coming.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Double<\/a>Written and directed by Tom Shulman, the Oscar-winning writer of <\/span>Dead Poets Society<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Double Down South<\/span><\/i> takes place in the rarified world of keno billiards. Now, I\u2019ve been writing about billiards and film since 2013, and for the record, I had never heard of the sport either. Keno billiards has a certain mythical folklore surrounding it. Even within diehard online billiards communities (e.g., <\/span>AZBilliards<\/span><\/a><\/span>), few have played it, some dismiss it (as largely a game of luck), and many have not heard of it. But, it\u2019s most definitely real, and one requiring real skill. As someone once said, \u201cIf ya want to know how to turn a big stack of cash into a little stack of cash….start playing [keno billiards].”<\/span><\/p>\n

The game is played on a pool table, with the two far corner pockets covered by a keno game board, consisting of rows of numbered holes. Players then trade shots, attempting to hit the billiards balls into corresponding or predetermined numbered pockets on the keno board. Rules are almost always local, but generally involve lots of betting and doubling of bets based on making the shots.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Keno billiards likely began in the early 1900s, during a wave of billiards board games, with names such as Amos and Andy, Hatta Boy, Pigeon Pool, Roulo, Scotch Pool, Star, and Turf. Keno billiards was among the most popular, though today there are only a couple of manufacturers of the board, and you\u2019d be hard pressed to locate a (legal) game.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Double<\/a>But, if you wanted to find an illegal game circa 1998, travel to (the fictitious town of) Kingsville, Georgia, the \u201ckeno capital of the world,\u201d and head to Nick\u2019s, an antebellum, dilapidated plantation house that now acts as a pool hall and diner for many bearded, beer-bellied, bubbas.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Into this Southern backwoods fraternity enters Diana (Lili Simmons), a bomber-jacket-and-beanie-cap wearing, belly-ring sporting stunner, whose drop-dead looks and slo-mo Southern drawl could raise Stonewall Jackson from his grave. Diana is the one who didn\u2019t come to adopt a puppy, though it\u2019s pretty obvious she didn\u2019t randomly show up just to shoot pool, either.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Double<\/a>Allegedly, she\u2019s come to get good at keno. It\u2019s a paper-thin story, but that doesn\u2019t bother Nick (Kim Coates), the racist, misogynistic, proprietor, who\u2019s only too glad to have such a hot piece of action as the main roadside attraction at his establishment. Indeed, Diana\u2019s not two bites into her catfish sandwich, before Nick is propositioning her with a rednecked, blueballed, plan that\u2019s all about making some green. In exchange for room, board, and teaching her the game of keno, Nick will promote Diana and stakehorse her for a percent of her winnings. It\u2019s a harebrained proposal, all the more absurd given it\u2019s based on watching her pocket only a few shots. With minimal deliberation, Diana accepts, setting in motion a dangerous and tense partnership.<\/span><\/p>\n

So begins Diana\u2019s tutelage, under the one working eye of good-natured Little Nick (Igby Rigney). In record time, she masters the game\u2019s nuances and defeats a rogue’s gallery of high-stakes keno billiards bad boys, including Nick\u2019s former show pony Douche, a lecherous \u201cbasement psycho\u201d named Harvey Block, Tulsa, Rebel, and even Tony \u201cRooster\u201d Rose. Along the way, she wins the warmth and admiration of Little Nick, the father Old Nick, the mansion matron Sheila, and all the local yokels, who are as impressed with her skills as they are mesmerized by her curves.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Double<\/a>But, the real target is Beaumont DuBinion (Justin Marcel McManus), a Black keno champion, who allegedly once cheated Nick and paid with a beatdown and the loss of both kidneys. The hatred runs hot, and Nick wants nothing more than to beat Beaumont once more (and maybe for the South to rise again).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Beneath the baize there\u2019s a lot happening in this genre-bending Southern Gothic, Western, Sports drama thriller.\u00a0 While the \u201csurprise\u201d ending is more predictable than a muggy Mississippi summer, <\/span>Double Down South<\/span><\/i> works primarily because of the intense characterizations and cat-and-mouse dynamics between the film\u2019s two leads, Diana and Nick.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Simmons, largely a TV actress known for recurring roles in <\/span>Banshee<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Ray Donovan<\/span><\/i>, imbues Diana with mystery and feminine toughness, while also showing complexity and vulnerability, as her motives are continually questioned. Her precarious alliance with Nick, played with hotblooded, unpredictable volatility by Mr. Coates, keeps the tension high. Viewers who enjoy Mr. Coates as Tig Trager, the fearless motorcycle club sergeant at arms from <\/span>Sons of Anarchy<\/span><\/i>, will not be disappointed.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the keno billiards, credit likely goes to cinematographer Alan Claudillo, who ensures the game playing, with its dull-but-difficult shots, does not turn into a putt-putt snorefest, but rather maintains some level of dramatic tension.\u00a0 It\u2019s a challenging feat, and the lack of single continuous shots demonstrates how hard it is to film expert keno billiards, but ignoring any purist outcries, the sequences do not distract from the tempo.<\/span><\/p>\n

Double Down South<\/span><\/i> is having its live, <\/span>digital premiere<\/span><\/a><\/span> on February 24. To learn more about the movie, visit its <\/span>website<\/span><\/a><\/span>. A special thank you to Kim Dixon for providing me with advanced access to write this review.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou come to shoot pool?\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t come to adopt a puppy.\u201d That opening, sharp-tongued retort suggests viewers may be in for two hours of ratatat pool-playing. And that wouldn\u2019t be entirely wrong. Double Down South, which premiered at the 2022 Newport Beach Film Festival, is very much a billiards film, full of bank shots, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[216,250,244,18],"class_list":["post-7016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-billiards-movies-2","tag-billiards-film","tag-billiards-films","tag-billiards-movie","tag-billiards-movies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3NFZw-1Pa","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billiardsmovies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billiardsmovies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billiardsmovies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billiardsmovies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billiardsmovies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.billiardsmovies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billiardsmovies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billiardsmovies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billiardsmovies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}