Bursting into the room with a shock of black hair and a broad grin that nakedly betrays his cool, Mars Callahan–the writer, director, and star of Poolhall Junkies–looks like the winner of a trip to movie fantasy camp, where he gets to monologue like Marlon Brando, move the camera like Martin Scorsese, and work with tough-guy actors like Christopher Walken and Rod Steiger. Cribbed from On The Waterfront, Mean Streets, and its more obvious antecedents, The Hustler and The Color Of Money, Poolhall Junkies looks like a cheap polyester suit, an entirely synthetic composite of scenes from other movies. The only authentic thing in it, outside of Walken's reliable otherworldliness, is Callahan's enthusiasm for mimicry: Like the neo-Rat Packers in Swingers, he's not a real player, but he clearly enjoys pretending to be one. On a certain level, Callahan seems aware of his amateur status; he's starring as a would-be pool shark who gets held back from the professional circuit, instead working a dingy hall with young nickel-and-dime hustlers who are even bigger screw-ups than he is. With his impeccable feel for the game, he "coulda been a contenda," were it not for small-time thug Chazz Palminteri, the mentor who plucked him from the streets and proceeded to squeeze him for every dollar he was worth. At a party, Callahan meets a more benevolent father figure in millionaire Walken, who instills him with a renewed sense of confidence and a fresh cash supply. That sets the stage for a high-stakes nine-ball showdown between Callahan and Palminteri's newest discovery, a former ranked pool pro slumming for easy money, played with stone-faced anti-charisma by Rick Schroder. At the film's center, Callahan allows too much flotsam to orbit around him: a paralegal girlfriend (Alison Eastwood) who urges him to hang up his cue, four short-con dopes who hold him in pitifully high regard, and yet another father figure (Steiger) who nudges him down a straight-and-narrow path. If nothing else, Poolhall Junkies tries to sell its clichés with the infectious, almost boyish enthusiasm of a movie nut; whenever Walken opens his mouth, for example, Callahan seems to drop out of character and gaze at him xsadoringly. But many of his rookie mistakes are unforgivable, such as repeatedly using James Brown's "The Payback" to underline a revenge theme, and having a guy insist that he won't throw a party or pawn off his car, only to cut to him partying and pawning. Just as the suckers who fall for Poolhall Junkies' cheap hustles deserve to lose their shirts, Callahan's musty old tricks shouldn't fool anybody.