The Gambler, 2014.
Directed by Rupert Wyatt
Starring Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Michael K. Williams, Brie Larson, Jessica Lange and George Kennedy.
SYNOPSIS:
Lit professor and gambler Jim Bennett’s debt causes him to borrow money from his mother and a loan shark. Further complicating his situation is his relationship with one of his students. Will Bennett risk his life for a second chance?
Spoilers for both the 1974 and 2014 versions of The Gambler below…
At the end of Karel Reisz’s 1974 film The Gambler James Caan’s character is debt-free after dragging a young student with a promising basketball career into the world of sports fixing. The student, Caan sees, is just as susceptible to making a quick thousand dollars as Caan is to losing it. Caan never smiles or shows signs of having broken free of his addiction; rather he goes into a nearby rundown brothel, picks a fight with a pimp, and has his face slashed in the process. He stares at his bleeding face in the mirror, both a reminder forever of his self-inflicted destruction yet a warning to the audience that he is far from saved. It’s one of the darkest and depressing endings in 70s cinema and yet, it is the prefect end.
Fast forward 40 years and we have Robert Wyatt’s remake. This one ends with Mark Wahlberg’s character Jim Bennett running through the streets through a series of jump cuts whilst a popular song plays out loud, hoping to raise the audience’s spirits as he races towards the home of a girl we have barely gotten to know. Wyatt’s film wants to be about redemption and new starts, but it earns nothing.
I wouldn’t typically describe the ending of a film in a review but it perfectly encapsulates everything which is wrong with Wyatt’s film on its own, and how utterly vacant it is as a remake. In 1974 The Gambler was a quiet study in addiction within a man who was fully aware of his problems but to him the rush comes from the thought of losing it all; Reisz never asks the audience to feel sorry for Caan nor does he try to heighten emotions by bombarding his audience with familiar source music or by manufacturing tension. This, it seems, is all Robert Wyatt has left in his director’s toolkit because I saw little evidence to suggest anything approaching the talent which was behind The Escapist and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
It’s safe to say I actively disliked nearly every film making decision in this new version of The Gambler but by the same token I can understand why some viewers might accept or even like it; wall-to-wall source music, ‘creative’ onscreen text/angles/overcranking/jumpcuts, an uplifting ending, ‘cool’ dialogue and scenery chewing from several well known actors is to be found in nearly every scene. The issue I found from the very start is that Wyatt’s direction paired with William Monahan’s faux-Tarantino screenplay is forever in service of nothing; is it a comedy? Is it a relationship drama? Is it a (very weak) character study? Is it a thriller? It dips its toe into all genres but never once commits to getting out of the shallow end.
Why do we care if Wahlberg pays off his debt if we don’t like the character, and why do we care if he ends up with the girl if we don’t like him and know very little about her? Certainly protagonists can be unlikable and we might dislike their morals and ethics, but in the case of Jim Bennett he’s just a cocky, arrogant asshole which, I assume, Monahan thought would be someone we can get behind once they decide to go straight, but I was unable to find one redeeming feature about this character. The problem is that nothing in Monahan’s script feels real, his dialogue comes across as forced, trying to be hip and memorable, but the characters never once ring true saying these words even if the likes of (the usually dependable) John Goodman are delivering the lines. The same was true of his truly awful 2010 film London Boulevard, which makes this script look good.
For a film about stakes and gambling, nothing ever feels at stake nor does Wyatt convince any sense of foreboding and it all feels far too light and breezy for us to get engaged with. This brings us back to the question ‘why do I care?’ or more predominantly ‘why did this film get made?’ because nothing clicks, nothing works, and we’ve seen this all before. Perhaps The Gambler just came at the wrong time for me, a juncture where I have to say this simply isn’t good enough and one film takes the brunt of my frustration; with all the talent involved and a fantastic original film to draw inspiration from, The Gambler is a loser any way you look at it.
In gambling terminology; No dice.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Rohan Morbey – follow me on Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszFJHnpNzqHh6gswQ0Srpi5E&x-yt-cl=84411374&x-yt-ts=1421828030&v=qqtW2LRPtQY&feature=player_embedded
Originally published January 24, 2015. Updated April 15, 2018.
