Director: Luc Walpoth
Director Luc Walpoth builds "Dead Money" (2024) around a single wild night, when a home poker game goes wrong and a professional card player finds himself gambling with far more than chips.
What is Dead Money about?
Andy makes his living reading opponents across a felt table, and his relationship with girlfriend Chloe has settled into an easy rhythm around that career. That rhythm shatters when armed men hit a private poker night the couple is attending, turning a routine game into a hostage situation. To buy their way out, Andy has to sit back down and play the highest-stakes hand of his career while Chloe's safety hangs on every card. The film compresses its action into roughly twenty-four hours, cutting between tense negotiations, shifting alliances among the other players, and Andy's attempts to calculate a way out that doesn't get anyone killed. Emile Hirsch leads as Andy, with David Keith, India Eisley, Jackie Earle Haley, Rory Culkin, Peter Facinelli, Jimmy Jean-Louis, and Jocelyn Hudon filling out a table of players whose loyalties are never quite settled.
Cast & crew
Emile Hirsch anchors the film as Andy, opposite India Eisley as Chloe, with veteran character actors David Keith, Jackie Earle Haley, and Peter Facinelli rounding out a card table stocked with familiar faces. Rory Culkin, Jimmy Jean-Louis, and Jocelyn Hudon complete the ensemble.
Context & significance
Made in the United States and running 100 minutes, "Dead Money" belongs to a lineage of poker-adjacent thrillers that use a card game as a pressure cooker for a larger crime plot. Its 5.8 IMDb rating places it among genre efforts that lean on cast recognition and a tight single-night structure rather than sprawling plotting.
Where & how to watch
"Dead Money" can be streamed on K-Time after logging into a free account; the page describing the film is open to everyone, and the K-Time interface is built with Farsi-speaking viewers in mind.