Yonkers Joe is partly a telegraphed drama of familial reconciliation, but also an ode to analog-era gamblers now outdated and overmatched in the age of upscale, digital-surveillance casinos. The title character (Chazz Palminteri) is a gruff East Coast cardsharp who finds his mostly uncluttered life (he has a girlfriend of equally knockabout motivation, Janice, played by Christine Lahti, but seems disinclined to opt for any sort of ordinary domesticity) suddenly complicated by his estranged, mentally challenged namesake son (Tom Guiry). Stricken with emotional and anger problems stemming from his virtual abandonment, Joey is approaching his 21st birthday, and with that milestone a forced decision — not really in his own hands — about his future residence. So with his cohorts and young Joey in tow, Joe the elder heads to Las Vegas, looking to run a loaded-dice craps scam, and score a payday that will allow him to afford posh group-home care for his son. Think of it as a patriarchal Rain Man, with a pinch of to-scale 21.

Distracting coverage problems certainly mar any hope for a smooth setting of scene, and writer-director Robert Celestino repeatedly overplays his hand with inserts that make Joe look considerably less slick than we’re led to believe. The script also doesn’t give Palminteri much to inform his character’s new-fashioned cruelty (he’s not physically abusive, but deems Joey “my sentence”), other than an absentee mother and some major avoidance issues. That leaves some of the film’s father-son drama to be sold in sheer emotive force rather than via persuasive content. But Palminteri and a passel of familiar small screen faces (did Dick Wolf cast this movie?) earn the film slight passing marks, if only mostly because it’s interesting to see old operators have to adapt their schemes for new times. (Magnolia, R, 102 minutes)