Warner Bros. Pictures - 2007

In the world of high-stakes poker, Huck Cheever (Eric Bana) is a blaster - a player who goes all out, all the time. But in his personal relationships, Huck plays it tight, expertly avoiding emotional commitments and long-term expectations.

When Huck sets out to win the main event of the 2003 World Series of Poker - and the affections of Billie Offer (Drew Barrymore), a young singer from Bakersfield - there is one significant obstacle in his path: his anger toward his father, L.C. Cheever (Robert Duvall), the poker legend who abandoned Huck's mother years ago.

As these two rivals progress toward a final showdown at the poker table, Huck learns that to win in the games of life and poker, he must try to play cards the way he has been living his life and live his life the way he has been playing cards.

Throughout the production, the presence of the real poker players was invaluable to the filmmakers, who went to great lengths to accurately represent not only the world of tournament play but the less public high-stakes cash games in Las Vegas. No detail was overlooked; even the dealers at the tables were all longtime poker dealers recruited from Las Vegas casinos.

Jean Smart is one of the only Hollywood actors to have a major role at the poker table as Michelle Lewis, inspired by one of poker's most successful female professionals, Jennifer Harman (Harman herself appears in the film, but as a fictional player named Shannon Kincaid).

Director Curtis Hanson credits Jean as being the actor who was the best poker player, in spite of just having learned to play for the part. "Jean Smart does a great job playing a character who is somewhat inspired by Jennifer Harman and does a wonderful job as a premier cash-game player."

"I got to play Texas Hold 'Em and get paid for it," Jean happily reports. Since filming wrapped, she's been asked to participate in celebrity poker tournaments, but hasn't been able to due to schedule conflicts.

"It's sort of my new hobby. We were playing with fake $25,000 chips in the movie. It's different playing with real money," she notes dryly. "I feel like such an idiot, sitting there saying, 'Another $2? Gee … don't know.'"

"Jean Smart is disarmingly entrancing as the smooth, nonchalant, girl-in-the-all-boys-club championship player. Even though her dialogue is just as bland as everyone else's, she spins each word and expression into pure gold." -- Cinema Blend

"There's exactly one entertaining scene in the movie (less a scene, actually, than a few looks), which finds Duvall at the table opposite the ever-radiant Jean Smart; each trying to out-bluff the other, the actors, with insinuating delight, briefly engage in some exhilarating nonverbal repartee." -- River Cities' Reader