Set in 1998 for no discernable reason other than a third act twist that would've been figured out with access to Google or any social media platform--or, as it turns out, by anyone who's ever seen a movie before--DOUBLE DOWN SOUTH is a listless and boring gambling drama set in the deep south world of high stakes keno pool, which is about as cinematically exciting as watching someone with sharpened pencils at the ready writing up a character's strengths and attributes for a tabletop RPG. Diana (Banshee and Power: Force's Lili Simmons) arrives at the dilapidated rural Georgia mansion of the extremely seedy Nick (veteran character actor Kim Coates with a rare lead), who runs a lucrative underground keno pool operation, though you wouldn't know it from the set design of his seemingly condemned home/headquarters, where every surface is covered with streaks of grime and mold appears to be crawling up the walls.
With Coates' presence, this really wants to be some sort of HUSTLERS OF ANARCHY, but it mistakes overbaked HEE HAW drawls for characterizations and local color, and it's really hard to stay interested in billiards action that involves taking slow-as-possible shots to get the numbered ball into a corresponding numbered slot in a panel placed at the other end of the table. There certainly isn't enough here to justify its ludicrous 124-minute running time, and it's clear from the opening amateurish, shaky drone shots that Diana didn't just roll up to Nick's without ulterior motives and has some secrets (like a significant other she keeps mentioning) that you'll see coming long before Nick, his dad Old Nick (Tom Bower, another veteran character actor) and the rest of the keno-hooked yokels do.
The only point of interest in DOUBLE DOWN SOUTH is that it was written and directed by Tom Schulman, who won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 1989's DEAD POETS SOCIETY. He was pretty in-demand around that time, also scripting HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS, the John Larroquette/Bronson Pinchot dud SECOND SIGHT, WHAT ABOUT BOB? And MEDICINE MAN before skidding through the rest of the '90s, making his directing debut with 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG, writing the Eddie Murphy bomb HOLY MAN and creating the 2003 Sally Field legal drama THE COURT, canceled by ABC after three episodes.
Playing some small festivals in 2022 before finally being released on VOD in 2024, DOUBLE DOWN SOUTH marks Schulman's first released project since scripting 2004's WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT. (Schulman also had a hand in J. J. Abrams' proposed medical series ANATOMY OF HOPE, which never made it beyond an unaired 2007 pilot before HBO pulled the plug). Schulman served a stint as a WGA president in the '00s, but other than boredom and wanting to get out of the house, there's nothing in DOUBLE DOWN SOUTH to indicate why this was the project that brought the 73-year-old Academy Award-winner back from a two-decade sabbatical.