The Gambler suffers from a curious problem: the film is far more interesting than anything that happens in the film. A remake of the 1974 film of the same name, this version is defined by incongruity. It is sharply made and well acted; director Rupert Wyatt understands the inherent drama letting the flip of one card determine the fate of $80,000. But all that effort seems wasted on Mark Wahlberg’s Jim Bennet, who at no point warrants all this effort.
The Gambler is the story of a gambling addict named Jim. He comes from wealth (his grandfather is the 17th richest man in the country). He received the best education money can buy. He’s a successful writer and teacher. And yet he’s still in debt $260,000 to a couple of local heavyweights. They give him 7 days to pay off his debt, and The Gambler spends its hour and a half showing us Jim’s attempt to solve his debt. The plot of The Gambler is pretty much as you expect: Jim owes, can’t pay. Jim looks for money, goes further in debt, gambles more, etc. Like all gambling movies, the conclusion hinges on whether Jim will win and get our or lose it all.
That being the central plot of The Gambler, I wish I could say it carried some drama in its in unfolding. But it does not. Jim is an addict but the film is only cursorily interested in addiction. He’s a writer (failed, by his own accounting) but what that has to do with gambling is a mystery. He comes from obscene amounts of family money, but the film doesn’t much care about wealth (probably its greatest missed opportunity). Any of these could have added depth to The Gambler, but it’s incongruity never quite finds any resolution.
In perhaps the film’s most incongruous decision, Jim (Mark Wahlberg, remember) is also a college literature professor. In class one day, Jim gives what must be the complete anti-Dead Poets Society English Teacher speech, in which he tells his class not to endeavor towards anything if they have not already recognized their genius. If you cannot attain the highest level of performance then do not waste your time. Shakespeare, for example was a genius; Jim, on the other hand, is not (hearing Wahlberg’s lilting voice lecture on Shakespeare…incongruous!). Not being a genius, Jim refuses to write at all-though not really, since he’s already written a well-received novel a few years prior (“I refuse to write mid-list books for good reviews from the kind of writers I give good reviews to,” he tells his class in a line that indicates just how little this film understands a college classroom).
Only one person in Jim’s lecture hall, he says, has the genius to be a writer: a quiet woman named Amy (Brie Larson, with far too little to do here), who also happens to work at the underground gambling club that Jim frequents. For no apparent reason, Amy falls for Jim (he’s a professor/she’s a student seems to be all the reason The Gambler finds necessary?) and becomes the younger woman/love interest that just might inspire the despairing man to change his ways and his gambling/nihilism.
The central, and fatal, problem for The Gambler is that Jim is actually quite boring. The film, as directed by Rupert Wyatt, treats his nihilism as depth of its own accord. Anyone who’s spent time with wayward nihilistic academics knows that they’re not as complex as they might wish us to believe. Jim’s impassioned speeches to students, and to Amy, about life and “getting back to zero” and “wanting love and a house” come off not as insightful but as empty and vacuous and childish. The story picks up midstream (its opening scene is one of the best), but never puts in the legwork to go back and give us some reason to invest in Jim’s fate.
Still, Wyatt is capable and stylish, and this movie is an enjoyable work of film-making, even if audiences are left with little to care for. There are some delightful performances filling out the edges-especially from John Goodman and Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire’s Omar), both of whom are given long takes of spirited dialogue to chew and make the most of it .
The Gambler is reminiscent of Andrew Dominick’s 2012 film Killing Them Softly, about Brad Pitt’s hitman-for-hire in the midst of a national recession. Both are full of this sense of incongruity between story and execution (both even feature strange speeches about the moral-shortcomings of America’s founders). But Dominick has a sense of purpose behind his incongruity that leaves audiences puzzled in a refreshing way.
The Gambler never manages to find that feeling. It’s nice enough I suppose, but I couldn’t help feeling the money spent on this could easily have been better spent elsewhere. Maybe that’s the point. It is a gambling film, after all. And it’s out on Christmas. What better way to spend Christmas than watching a film about a nihilist wasting his money for no reason at all?
Leave a Reply