Welcome back to Movie Reviews. Today I'm going to show you a crime, thriller film from 2005, titled Revolver. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care. After seven years of confinement, cockney gambler Jake Green is finally freed from prison. Two years later, he and his brother Billy go to one of the most important casinos in the area with the intention of getting back the money they are owed by the owner, crime boss Dorothy Macha. Ignoring his bodyguard Paul's advice, he allows Jake to join his private game.
On the way up, Jake won't take the elevator because of his claustrophobia, but the other bodyguards remind him they have to climb twenty floors, so he gives in and takes the elevator while fighting a panic attack. A good way for the movie to get the audience into Jake's world is to have Jake place his first bet on the chip toss against another player at the table which he loses. But this is intentional: he is robbing Macha of a false sense of security, so that when he is wagering the same bet with him, he wins for sure on this time. Billy and Jake rush out of the casino with bags of cash when on their way out Zach stops them and then tells them that they are in danger and he can save them before he gives his card to Jake.
This time round, Jake decides to take the stairs, but before he can even go down one step, he passes out and falls down as the card is revealed to say "take the elevator". While Jake is being rushed to the hospital, Macha explains to Paul his worries.
Jake must have thought of a way to exact a bigger revenge after being imprisoned for seven years, especially after the incident with his sister-in-law, so Macha ordered Paul to hire the best hitman in business to get rid of him. Jake finds out at the hospital no cause for the blackout could be seen at first glance, so he should go home and rest while waiting for the blood test results. Billy goes to his own house while Jake takes the bodyguards for protection, but all of them are shot as soon as they arrive. The only reason he manages to avoid getting hit is that he sees a card on the floor with: "pick this up" on it, so he bends down and picks it up.
He attempts to drive off in the car, but the driver gets shot as well-too bad for him, as Zach only just happens to get there in time to save him and take him away. The hitman, Sorter, cannot understand how this man missed since he never misses, so he hypothesizes that someone must have had tipped Jake off. What he cries out to Macha when he chides him however is that he missed because he had a bad feeling. Meanwhile, Zach takes Jake to meet his partner, Avi, who has somehow managed to get hold of Jake's medical file.
The test results are in: Jake has a rare blood disease that will cause his death within three days.
The men promise to take care of the guards for Jake, but they will only do this under two conditions: that he has all his money and that he agrees to do whatever they want, including answering all the questions they ask him. They give him three hours, but Jaske leaves without saying a word because he is convinced they're trying to trick him. Those results that he pulls from the hospital, same; Jaskier, however, once again believes that the lab must have been bribed by Zach and Avi, and asks his private doctor to look into it for him, with whom he is just as suitably impressed.
Now, menacing him with his gun to make sure he doesn't get any compensation either, Jake tells him he's got nothing else to do and, after taking money from the bank, goes back to them for their deal. As they go out for a ride, Avi explains that the group are loan sharks, and it'll be Jake's money that they'll be lending.
After going to their first customer to deliver the cash, Avi forces Jake to explain everything about his past with Macha. Macha had three very dumb men working for him known as the three Eddies. They lost their card man before the big game and knew Jake was a great player, so they called him in to replace him.
Jake wanted to refuse, but they threatened Billy's family, so he had to accept to protect them. During the game however, the other men on the table began insulting Jake and his mother. Jake would not accept that and so began shooting a gunfight - the power went off, the money disappeared, and the next thing he knew, somebody threw out his name and Jake was being questioned by the police.
To keep him from talking, they threatened his niece and just killed his sister-in-law out of mistake as she tried to protect her daughter. Jake doesn't inform the police that Macha has organized the games and put seven years in the cell, and inside, the Eddies do something to annoy Macha, and he gets them mixed into the concrete. After seeing a group of clients, Zach tells Jake to go to a motel to spend the night.
Meanwhile, Macha and Paul visit crime kingpin Sam Gold, considered the "ultimate figure" all other crime bosses want to be like. However, Gold never receives visitors, so instead they meet with his advisor, Lily Walker, who accepts to broker a powder deal with Macha.
She also reminds him that Gold doesn't like publicity or give second chances. Sometime later, Jake pays Zach and Avi more money before he's grilled about being in jail while he plays chess with Avi. He'd been given two options: fourteen years of normal time or seven years of solitary, so he'd selected solitary. His cell was between two men's, a chess master and a conman, that had been there for a long time, and while they never talked to each other, they knew everything about each other.
The three of them, during the first five years of Jake's sentence, used to send each other messages written on the library books. That is how Jake learned their formula to win any game in the world. Two men were planning to break jail and threatened to kidnap Jake along when they would leave, but when they finally did leave, into nowhere, they abandoned Jake and never said a word. He discovered that these two men had stolen all his money, and they only left behind a note that said "you can only get smarter by playing a smarter opponent", so Jaker started using the formula to make himself rich at various casinos.
With time, Jake continues working by visiting various clients and handing over his personal money. He's also supposed to threaten them if they don't pay, but he can't bring himself to hurt innocent, desperate people. Meanwhile, Avi and Zach are chaining the side of a wall to a truck so when they pull, they break said wall and steal the safe on the other side.
This safe contained the powder Macha had promised Lily, so when he discovers he has been robbed, he sends Paul to solve this no matter what it takes.
Paul goes to see their rival, Triad kingpin Lord John, who accepts to provide them with the powder on such short notice but only for an overinflated price. The four, including Jake, Zach, Avi, and the rest of their team, make their way to the hotel, where the trade is going to take place.
They sneak into a room next to the thugs' to make a hole in the wall and inject sleeping gas, putting both Macha's and John's men to sleep. Then they steal the money and the powder, framing it to make it look it was Macha that robbed John and vice-versa. Later, Billy calls Jake and informs him that he inquired about Zach and Avi and found out that they are so dangerous that not even Gold will touch them and, therefore, Jake should leave at once.
Jake does not listen, goes back to his work, where he is anticipated to take the shot at a frightened client. He refuses and attempts to shoot Avi instead, but he soon realizes that the gun is empty right before Avi knocks him out. Jake wakes up hours later in the motel and gets a call from Avi saying he's survived his third day so he should get a check-up. After his niece and Billy have come out and left him a gun "just in case," Jake walks to his doctor, where he is mistakenly diagnosed and told that he is just fine.
He tries to call Avi demanding answers, but it only makes Avi believe he will have to wait. Meanwhile, Paul has been researching and knew that Jake's name popped up associated with all of the issues his men have been facing, so he orders Macha to kill him. Upon Jake's return to the motel, Avi and Zach have been waiting for him and caution him, warning that Macha's thugs are inside the room.
Jake flees and the men follow him, but he manages to evade them - especially when one of the thugs falls down and shoots himself in the elbow by accident. The other goons find that body and assume the killer is Jake. Jake visits Avi and Zach in their office, where they confess that they always knew Jake didn't come clean about his deal with the Eddies.
Those three jokers had been waiting for Jake in line after he got out of prison to kill him, because what he did made them lose their jobs via Macha. To save his life, he proposed to the Eddies a deal: each month, he would pay them 3% of any money they would lend them. The first time, only one Eddie agreed to it. But when they saw he kept his deal, they all wanted to be in, this time for a 4%.
In fact, Jake was paying each Eddie with another Eddie's money, so he wasn't losing anything. It became such that they had no more money to borrow, so they borrowed from Macha, who quickly developed a fascination with the Eddies' magical money-generating man. After gambling with the formula and becoming rich, Jake decided for that period to go on holiday with his brother and niece, and it was while Macha murdered the Eddies for not repaying him. Discussing Macha, he's sitting down for dinner in one of the upscale restaurants when his goons, come in to inform him that Jake has escaped. Sorter finds John's girlfriend in disguise as a waitress so shoots her before escaping the restaurant to go after her chauffer.
But his shots are still off and he hurts her rather than kill her, so before she dies the woman just in time gets to shoot Macha's finger off in the middle of the confusion. Then, Sorter is dispatched to Lord John's hideout to kill him and his men. Back to Jake, he's still bantering to Zach and Avi while they play golf on a roof.
They tell him that no one ever gets to see Gold because he doesn't really exist: he is just a symbol of ego, an embodiment of greed, and he has power only over those people who invest in him. So what Jake has to do is alter the rules of what he allows to control him.
Then he himself runs to the bank and withdraws the rest of the cash on hand and donates it all and sneaks into Macha's bedroom. Fending off with the heads in his mouth, which are there to represent his ego, he apologizes to Macha about taking him for a ride and stealing his money, finds him the superior crime lord and says that he's made a donation in his name before making way.
To deal with his fears, Jake goes in and takes the elevator which is caught on the thirteenth floor. Fighting his panic attack, he plays an imaginary conversation where he tells his ego no, and finally comes out of this "game" as a free man.
Once the elevator starts to work again, Jake reaches the ground floor and finds Macha waiting for him with a gun driven by his own ego. But Jake is in a state of self contentment and just keeps walking past him, which makes Macha crazy because he can't get in his head why somebody won't fear him. He now cries for realizing how fully humiliated he's been.
The next day Paul collects all the local newspapers for him to see his name plastered all over them: Jake hadn't been lying when he said he made a donation in Macha's name, and now everyone thinks the casino owner cares about the community.
Macha is only too glad to accept the blame for them, but his victory is short-lived: Paul also informs him that Jake has the powder and he's been stradling them all along. Paul, Sorter, and the rest of Macha's henchmen go to see Billy and Billy gets his daughter into the cupboard, aware one of his bodyguards has switched sides.
After he is finally discovered the men start torturing him with the interrogation, in a disbelief as he claims to not know where Jake and the powder are. Torture methods of Paul are escalating fast and Sorter feels uneasy, particularly when they send the girl out of the cupboard after hearing her sob.
Absoluteness and refusing to hurt a child, Sorter rejects his ego and starts killing his fellow henchmen systematically and effectively, but he makes a mistake at the end and gets killed too. Meanwhile, Macha is visited by Lily. She brings him a wreath sent by Gold, who doesn't like to see Macha's name all over the newspapers since he doesn't like publicity.
Lily also informs him that Macha's hour of glory is over and he will not get a second chance, which lands him into another panicking fit. Avi and Zach take Jake and the powder to Macha's casino, where Avi finally beats Jake at a game of chess while confessing the last few details of the story. He and Zach were the guys in the cells next to Jake's, and they always wanted to take him along with them, but he hadn't been ready to accept the truth, implying they have been nothing but mere figments of Jake's imagination. Sadly, he has no time to come to terms with this for at that very moment, the casino's bodyguards come to take him to see Macha, who has the girl with him.
After dropping the bags of powder on the floor, Jake turns to his niece and tells her everything would be all right, which sets Macha in a frenzied mode because Jake still hasn't shown any fear even when he's pointing his gun at the child.
Humiliation leads the ego voices in Macha's mind to the conclusion that a dead man cannot be harmed, so he places the gun against his head and fires.
