Horatiu Malaele
Three heavy boozers – a Romanian, a Russian and a Bulgarian – are tripling away their… happiness, into vodka, at “The Happy Immigrant”, a joint kept by a Turk. The fauna of this venue is made up out of the Babel Tower’s survivors: immigrants who had chosen Romania, as a country where everything is possible. The predictions included… A police raid chases away the pub’s barflies. The three professional boozers stop from running just in front of a fortune teller expert in a niche field: death prediction. The rest is entertainment! Although we are all indebted to one death, some refuse to pay this debt. They don’t want to die when it was written for them. Or just predicted…
The latest film directed by Sergiu Nicolaescu, ‘The last corrupt in Romania,’ is Nicolaescu’s first movie after ‘Poker,’ which became a great box-office success in Romania. The recent film continues the events of ‘Poker,’ with a cast that brings together many popular Romanian actors – Horatiu Malaele, Vladimir Gaitan, Valentin Teodosiu, Ion Ritiu, Catalina Grama (Jojo) and Mircea Diaconu – who embody the same main characters as in Poker
n the history of Romanian cinema, Sergiu Nicolaescu’s name stands for “prolific, highly commercial and professional”. At the age of 80, the director launched his latest production, which is also his second comedy in a long row of action and historic films. “Poker” is a cinema adaptation of Adrian Lustig’s theatre play with the same name, and focuses on four male friends, representatives for the social canvas: a doctor without a moral conscience, an unscrupulous politician, a chief of the local mafia, and a businessman who made a fortune in America. Made by MediaPro Pictures, ‘Poker’ looks at immorality and intrigues in politics, hinting at the fact that contemporary Romania is a day to day jungle where strings are pulled by those in power, so everything turns into a poker round, where those who have the right aces in their sleeve can win.
