The Gambler

The Gambler
 

** ½ / ****

Reviewed by Sean Trolinder

Directed by Rupert Wyatt

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Jessica Lange, Michael K. Williams, Anthony Kelley

 

When one thinks about great gambling movies, there are not many that come to mind. The heights of the genre usually involve pool, so Paul Newman classics like The Hustler or Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money come to mind. When it comes to cards, The Cincinnati Kids and the highly underrated Rounders are landmark and influential films. However, for the few successful films about gambling ever made, there is a long list of failures (21, Lucky You, and the dreadful Runner Runner come to mind). And then, we arrive to the newest addition to the genre, The Gambler, which is actually an adaptation of a forgettable James Caan movie of the same name.

Like in Caan’s film, Mark Wahlberg plays an English professor and he borrows from his mother, but there is something about Wahlberg’s Jim Bennett that is both annoying, yet intriguing at the same time. Bennett is not your normal gambler who lives for the big score. He actually relishes in losing, seems to care about no one else for the first half of the movie, and seems to have a death wish, hoping that the bad men from whom he borrows from will put him out of his misery. Unlike other gambling films, Wahlberg’s Bennett is a loose cannon and even the bad men who demand that he pay up don’t know the proper way to punish him. On one hand, characters like Neville Baraka (played by Michael K. Williams) feel bad for him and desperately want him to care and get on with his life, but another part of Baraka—also known as “The King of Spades”— understands that gambling is a business and will stop at nothing to get his money.

While Jim Bennett’s suicide mission seems to be interesting enough in its own right, since he uses gambling as a means to have others do the deed, what does not quite work is how the audience struggles to understand his motivation for wanting to give up on life. Sure, Jim delivers some excellent one-liners and is a fun character to follow, but is he really someone most people can sympathize with? Is his depression because of how his grandfather, who was wealthy, died at the very beginning? Is it because he is ashamed of his wealth and wants his mother (played by Jessica Lange) to understand this as well? Or is it because he feels unfulfilled professionally, since he wrote a well-reviewed novel, but it never seems to satisfy Bennett knowing that it was not a masterpiece? In one key scene, Bennett discusses Camus’ The Stranger to his class and a basketball player named Lamar Allen (played by newcomer Anthony Kelley) claims that he can’t motivate himself to take the book seriously, since he “knows nothing about suicide.” Fed up with how Bennett’s students don’t take his class seriously and how someone like Lamar, who texts throughout class, is expected to be passed to protect his NCAA eligibility, Bennett goes on a tirade about giving up and what might drive someone to consider killing his/herself. It is an ironic scene, since the film calls attention to Bennett’s main problem, yet it still offers no clear solutions. For a man who essentially gives up on his class, Bennett begins to care about Lamar Allen and a talented student writer names Amy Phillips (played by Brie Larson). In predictable fashion, both Lamar and Amy become important parts in how the debt collectors try to persuade Jim Bennett into paying up.

Though director Rupert Wyatt had great vision in his previous film (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), he seems to just go through the ropes in The Gambler. Every so often, we do get nice shots of the desert and underground casinos, which establishes settings well, but Wyatt does nothing stylistically to elevate The Gambler into something as memorable as The Cincinnati Kid or Rounders. While Mark Wahlberg gives a steady performance, the script does not give a talented up and coming actress like Brie Larson (who was absolutely fantastic in Short Term 12) much to work with. However, the most memorable scenes are Jim Bennett’s moments with Frank (played by the excellent John Goodman), a dangerous loan shark who claims that if Bennett doesn’t pay him off, he’ll “kill off [his] entire family bloodline.” What makes Goodman’s scenes so memorable is the fact he seems to be the one man who gets that Jim Bennett is on a suicide mission, but he recognizes that Bennett’s position as an English professor makes him a smart man, so he tries to use wit to press Bennett into understanding that he is the one man he shouldn’t mess with. In fact, the dialogue between Wahlberg and Goodman is often funny and full of surprises.

Overall, The Gambler is entertaining at points and Wahlberg plays Bennett as well as the script could possibly let him. Also, John Goodman steals every scene he’s in, leaving many to wonder why the actor himself has never quite got his due as one of the best supporting actors around. The ending is a bit cliché and predictable, but it is not completely unsatisfying. With that said, The Gambler will do nothing to advance the genre of gambling thrillers, but it is better than films like 21 and Runner Runner, for sure.