
High Rollers review – John Travolta leads a charmless casino raid of staggering stupidity
The idea is that Mason Goddard (John Travolta, who has finally given up on hairpieces and embraced the bald) leads a rodent pack of skilled thieves and conmen. The gang is first met at the beach wedding of two of the group's younger members, tech whiz Link (Natali Yura, mouth permanently agape) and dim hunk Caras (Swen Temmel). Alas, the nuptials are interrupted when international criminal Salazar (Danny Pardo) and his henchmen swoop in and kidnap Mason's wife Amelia (Gina Gershon, somehow surviving this with dignity intact). Salazar demands that Mason and his crew, which also includes his gormless safecracking brother Shawn (Lukas Haas) and sidekicks Anton (mononymed Quavo) and Hector (Noel Gugliemi), must steal the contents of a safe in the suite of casino owner Zade Black (Demián Castro) at his supposedly classy New Orleans casino the Scarlet Pearl.
Even the name of this fictional gaming facility sounds trashy, and when we see its interior – all lurid carpeting and easily wipeable soft furnishings – it looks less like Monte Carlo's finest than the kind of seedy regional gambling den that the producers could hire cheaply. The air of tawdry cost-cutting pervades every level of the film, from the casting to the costumes to the paste jewellery that's supposed to stand in for posh gemstones. There are tons of holes in the plot, but those are too tedious to parse; just study the frame closely and you can have a laugh at the truly hideous pictures on the walls that someone on the team thought would pass for fancy art.
High Rollers is on digital platforms from 16 June.
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The Sun
2 minutes ago
- The Sun
Conjoined twins Brittany & Abby Hensel seen with baby – one sister is married & the other single, so how does it work?
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SHARED LIFE Their story first captured global attention in 1996 after they were born on March 7, 1990, with a rare condition known as dicephalic parapagus, where two heads are side-by-side on a single torso. From the waist down, the twins share all organs, including bladder, intestine and reproductive organs. Above this, they have two hearts, two oesophagi, two stomachs, three kidneys, two gall bladders, four lungs (two of which are joined), one liver, one ribcage - and they have two spines which join at the pelvis. Brittany, the left twin, has no feeling on the right side of her body, while Abby can't feel anything on her left, and they instinctively move their limbs as if they were coordinated by one person. The Hensel sisters are the rarest form of conjoined twins, and were formed as the result of a single fertilised egg failing to fully separate in the womb. 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The Guardian
32 minutes ago
- The Guardian
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The annual Call of Duty releases may not upend the industry's status quo or redefine a beloved genre, but there's no denying the value in Black Ops 7, the obvious bang for your buck in purchasing one game and getting three experiences that can be played with friends. Its holistic take on the modern FPS will probably keep it relevant, whatever Battlefield brings to the table. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is released on PC, PS5 and Xbox on 14 November


The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
South Park takes aim at Trump's Washington DC crime crackdown with the return of an old character
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