THE GAMBLER
Paramount Pictures
Reviewed for Shockya by Harvey Karten. Data-based on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade: B
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Screenwriter: William Monahan based on the 1974 film “The Gambler”
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Michael Kenneth Williams, George Kennedy, Jessica Lange, Richard Schiff, Andre Braugher
Screened at: Paramount, NYC, 12/2/14
Opens: December 19, 2014 (limited)
Some say that compulsive gamblers who bet more money than they can afford are self-destructive, even suicidal. They actually want to lose, given their self-hate. This is doubtless true for some. In “The Gambler,” however, scripter William Monahan finds Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) as a guy who gambles despite a losing streak because he wants to live to the limit, to take risks. He has contempt for the comfortable life he was born into with a rich mother, Roberta (Jessica Lange) and a job teaching The Modern Novel to a university class. This is true as well, not only for him but for others of that ilk.
And this is a subject that lends itself to drama. As director, Rupert Wyatt, whose “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” posits super-bright simians, counts on Mark Wahlberg to deliver convincing and exciting portrait of a man who teaches in a large lecture hall by day and drops fortunes in a casino at night. On the podium, he comes across as an associate professor who should be well-liked by his students, principally because he does not stand behind a lectern and deliver from ten-year-old notes. He marches about the hall, picking up a cell phone from one student about to make a call, even sitting in a chair that is meant for students in the middle of the hall. He informs them that you have it or you don’t. Shakespeare, he says in effect, must be one in millions. He had genius. If you consider yourself a writer and you don’t have genius, you will always be middling in the task as he proves himself when his own novel cleared no more than $17,000.
Bennett’s gambling debts puts him in need of loan sharks, the majordomo of a Korean-owned casino and his own mother. He borrows sums at exorbitant rates from Frank (John Goodman), who takes an interest in the teacher’s future, a Mr. Lee (Alvin Ing), a shark named Neville Baraka (Michael Kenneth Williams), plus a cool quarter million from his mother, who issues the sum with the caveat that it’s the last time she will ever give him money or even want to see him again. The one student in his class who is called the only genius, Amy Phillips (Brie Larson), is naturally flattered by the judgment. As this is a movie, we several steps ahead by knowing what sort of relationship will proceed from there, particularly since Amy, who works in the nightclub as a hostess, knows of her professor’s double.
“The Gambler” is based on a 1974 film of the same name written by James Toback, a Harvard grad whose gambling compulsion still plagues him today and which he turned into art with the ’74 picture thereby launching a movie career. (In that film, an NYU professor played by James Caan is an N.Y.U. literature professor.)
If you are a teacher, you may appreciate the scenes in the classroom even more than those in the casino, particularly when Bennett tells the youths that “I pretend to teach, and you pretend to learn.” This is a cynical view but one that is not unpopular today, as every generation finds fault with those who are the future of America. Mark Wahlberg does not have to show great depth this time around. His acting chops are easily sufficient to match the demands of the role in a film that is entertaining throughout, albeit not extremely credible—particularly those parts that show the title character playing double-or-nothing until he loses everything at the blackjack table in a game that’s almost pure luck. Do we root for Jim Bennett? Knowing his self-destructive character, especially when he borrows enough from his mother to pay off his creditors and yet proceeds to the betting tables, we may be happy to see him lose and may not be too concerned when he is beaten up for his deadbeat ways.
Rated R. 111 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – C+
Acting – B
Technical – B+
Overall – B
