Steven Seagal Hoping Gutshot Straight Will Hit The Mark

‘Rounders’ was released in 1998 and the highly rated movie is believed to have sown the seeds which would eventually lead to the poker boom of 2003 to 2006. The game of poker has since declined somewhat in popularity and a number of later movies have thus far failed to elicit the same level of excitement from poker fans, with notable failures including Lucky You (2007), Deal (2008), and Runner, Runner (2013).
Undaunted by the fact even top box office draws such as Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake have had no luck in drumming up interest in their poker offering, a new poker movie is set to hit the theaters on September 1, 2014, called ‘Gutshot Straight’. And who better (irony!) to have audiences queuing up to see such an originally named poker flick than Steven Seagal, an actor who has brought us such classics in the past as Driven to Kill, Pistol Whipped, Mercenary for Justice, Out for a Kill, Half Past Dead, and Exit Wounds.
The 62 year-old martial artist plays one of the main characters in ‘Gutshot Straight’ and as a synopsis which appeared in theactionelite.com, explains: “A professional poker player, Jack Daniel [George Eads], gets in with the underworld when he takes a wager proposed by Duffy, a mysterious gambler. In order to protect his family and himself, Jack must outwit Duffy’s cunning brother Lewis and scheming wife May as each attempts to force him into murdering the other. Jack seeks the help of Paulie Trunks [Steven Seagal], a loan shark looking to collect on Jack’s poker debts, who might want to protect his investment.”
Needless to say, if the trailer is anything to go on then Gutshot Straight is likely to be even worse than Runner Runner, which bombed at the US box office and earned only $19.3 million back from its original $30 million budget.
While his latest movie may fail to make a splash, recently Steven Seagal has attracted a lot of interest of another kind after the action star performed an ‘old-fashioned blues’ concert in the annexed Crimea, also taking time out to meet Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin, and tour a Russian arms fair.