Gambler, The (2014) [Blu-ray]
Crime | Drama | Thriller
Jim Bennett (Academy Award-nominee Mark Wahlberg) is a risk taker. Both an English professor and a high-stakes gambler, Bennett bets it all when he borrows from a gangster (Michael Kenneth Williams) and offers his own life as collateral. Always one step
ahead, Bennett pits his creditor against the operator of a gambling ring (Alvin Ing) and leaves his dysfunctional relationship with his wealthy mother (Academy Award-winner Jessica Lange) in his wake. He plays both sides, immersing himself in an illicit,
underground world while garnering the attention of Frank (John Goodman), a loan shark with a paternal interest in Bennett's future. As his relationship with a student (Brie Larson) deepens, Bennett must take the ultimate risk for a second chance.
Storyline: Jim Bennett is a risk taker. Both an English professor and a high-stakes gambler, Bennett bets it all when he borrows from a gangster and offers his own life as collateral. Always one step ahead, Bennett pits his
creditor against the operator of a gambling ring and leaves his dysfunctional relationship with his wealthy mother in his wake. He plays both sides, immersing himself in an illicit, underground world while garnering the attention of Frank, a loan shark
with a paternal interest in Bennett's future. As his relationship with a student deepens, Bennett must take the ultimate risk for a second chance... Written by Paramount Pictures
Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, April 16, 2015 -- The Gambler begins strong and fades as it pushes through a flat arc and towards a predictable finale. Director Rupert Wyatt's (Rise of the Planet of the
Apes) latest film hits all of the usual notes with nary a twist or much more than a few well-placed and plot-perfect character details inserted to help make a difference by the end. Where the film aims to build a thorough character study centered on
addiction, inner strife, outer conflict, ballooning problems, and shrinking escapes, it devolves into a transparent and tame Thriller that culminates in a total letdown of a climax, albeit one that fits with the movie's relative lack of grit and (mostly)
absence of authentic tension. A remake of the 1974 film of the same name, 2014's version prefers tightroping its way through the motions, afraid to push too far but never quite going far enough, failing to truly get inside the mind of a man whose vice has
taken him down and, ultimately, is the only thing that can bring him back up. The movie is technically proficient but lacking the depth necessary to get more than a fly-by glimpse into a world that Philip Seymour Hoffman has already fully defined, leaving
The Gambler feeling superfluous, contributing nothing new to the genre or the discussion.
Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) spends his days delivering literature lectures to college students. His nights, however, are spent gambling away a fortune. He lays thousands of dollars on the line at the blackjack table at an underground casino operated by a
man named Lee (Alvin Ing). Jim's either very good or very lucky; he turns $10,000 into a sum many times that amount after just a few hands, but his luck runs out to the tune of owing Lee nearly a quarter-million dollars. He gets in deeper with a couple of
shady loan sharks (Michael Kenneth Williams and John Goodman), and even when he has the money in-hand thanks to an angry mother (Jessica Lange) who bails him out for the last time, he can't help but to blow it. He's got a week to pay off all his debts
before he meets the end of his road. Meanwhile, he begins a relationship with a student (Brie Larson) and finds a use for Lamar (Anthony Kelley) and Dexter (Emory Cohen), two of his academically underachieving but athletically gifted students, in a plan
that just might get him out so long as they don't mind helping him go all-in.
The Gambler starts strongly and falls apart soon afterwards. The opening gambling sequence is breathtakingly agonizing, a painful, intense, emotionally charged open that does a superb job of defining the character's high-stakes, all-in mentality
while instantly conditioning the audience to the same. It's invigorating, genuinely tumultuous, haunting, and even sad, leaving the audience wanting nothing more than to jump through the screen and stop him while he's ahead. Then again there wouldn't be a
movie, but considering how quickly The Gambler loses its edge, that might not have been a negative outcome. For as well as it's crafted to begin -- with Wahlberg selling the intensity, the unbreakable addiction -- there's never much real sense of
deep characterization. Sure he's an accomplished lecturer and one of the most refreshingly blunt ones at that, but the entire movie centers on his gambling. Even with a few flashbacks to his childhood -- driving with his dad, holding his breath in the
pool -- he's an empty vessel who thrives on the addiction and nothing else. Nothing -- not his classroom antics, not his burgeoning relationship with one of his students -- helps to give shape to a shallow character who isn't in the least bit sympathetic
because, outside of that brilliant open, turns into just another guy with just another problem that he's allowed to spiral deeply out of control. It's not Wahlberg's fault -- he's quite good with the listless material at his disposal -- but instead the
painfully threadbare script that settles for simple rather than aims for amazing.
The pieces surrounding Wahlberg are equally bland. There's not an interesting character in the bunch. All of the people to whom Jim owes money are only some variation on the same character theme. Each of them lacks an identifiable center, and even the
scene-devouring John Goodman, who puts up a good fight in his limited screen time, can't make much out of a routine character filling a stock part in a linear film. His relationship with Amy never feels like anything more than filler even as it aims to
serve as a greater physical representation of a possible paradigm shift for Jim, Lamar exists only to serve a simple purpose, and Dexter's character seems superfluous. The film even fails to find much in the way of character-building significance in the
lecture hall scenes, which are some of the best in the movie if only because they feel a bit more novel than the rest of the structurally flimsy picture. Rupert Wyatt struggles to maintain interest in the film beyond its richly crafted open, sinking with
the ship and ending the picture with a transparent thud that feels like the ultimate surrender to a lame, though baseline passable, movie.
The Gambler is a decent, though painfully linear, story of addiction, but Owning Mahowny still owns the "gambling problem" movie crown. The Gambler lacks the sort of deep characterization, authentic tension, and spellbinding flow
necessary to lift a story of this sort off the page and make it into a movie with something to offer beyond routine drama and generic thrills. The movie, then, can be boiled down to a single word: "disappointing." Paramount's Blu-ray release of The
Gambler features good video and excellent audio. A decent array of featurettes and deleted scenes are included. Rent it.
[CSW] -2.3- A frustrating character study that could easily have been made better, The Gambler is all in on suicidal stupidity and soft action sequences. I get the point that a philosophy of all-or-nothing could be believed to tempt a man to risk
it all in the hopes of success or suicide by proxy, but I can't buy the fact that an intelligent man would not be able to see the error of that philosophy. So it boils down to just a gambling addiction that belies the ending. I can't say more than that
without spoilers. Wahlberg certainly delivers his role, well in most scenes... but it's all for a guy who truly has nothing to win... which means us, the audience, have even worse odds of leaving a winner. Goodman as the philosophizing loan shark is
probably the highlight of the film. The film is worth a look, just do yourself a favor and don't go all in.
[V4.0-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.
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