Poker Film Review – Pari e Dispari (1978)

A thirty year old movie that I occasionally still watch and know the lines by heart, Pari e Dispari is definitely worth a watch if you haven’t seen it already. It’s a classic Bud Spencer – Terence Hill film about poker, gambling, roulette and sports betting, this is why I thought it deserves the review.

[3]

I think it’s pretty hard to write anything new about a film that almost everyone knows and has also aired by many TV stations. The jokes and punts are still as funny as they were 30 years ago, and we can still quote them at a poker table these days.

Let’s bet the favorite 11 to 1

Besides poker, we can see horse racing, American football, destruction derbies, boat racing and dog racing, and in the end of the movie Bud Spencer even dresses up as Jamón Serrano and plays a spoon throwing game [4] called Jai Alai [5], which has vague similarities to today’s squash.

In the film, Terence Hill plays the very witty Lieutenant Johnny Firpo, who receives the mission from the Navy to catch the Miami gambling mafia. As a compulsory element, Bud Spencer is right beside him, playing the ex-gambler Johnny Firpo, who is in the end convinced by Hill to return to the world of gambling, in order to collect money for the eye operation of their ’Papi’.

Which one’s bigger? The Ace or the King?

The film is jam-packed with the usual Hill-Spencer fights and jokes, but it is still better than their other films, and not just because of poker. I personally have watched all the films of this great duo, but this is the one that struck a chord with me and I remember the most.

In the film, they play the five card draw (the ’cunnning’ version.

I think I don’t really have to say to people ’this is a great film and worth a watch’, but more like ’watch it again, it seems to get funnier every time’. Everybody needs to reminisce sometimes!

Best quote of the movie:
- "I bet you five cents that I can drink more out of it than you can squeeze out of it!"
- "Nah, that’s impossible. . . OK! You’re on!"