Rupert Wyatt’s (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Star Trek 3) The Gambler is a movie that should have done better both with critics and at the box office. Accruing just $33 million domestically and a 46% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, this movie deserved a better fate. Sure it has its flaws, but 98% of all movies do. One factor against The Gambler was that it wasn’t striking the right audience. The first preview of this movie was a quick 30-second throwaway commercial during a ball game. I do not recall seeing a more extended trailer for this movie in the theater. When I did see the television commercial, it made it seem like it was a shoot ’em up action flick. That’s not what it was at all. I’ll say that this was one of Mark Wahlberg’s (Lone Survivor, The Perfect Storm) finest performances to date. I know Wahlberg is hit or miss with many people, but the man has talent. He has proven he can successfully do drama (The Fighter, Three Kings, Rock Star),  crime (The Departed, Four Brothers), comedy (The Other Guys, Date Night), and action (Shooter, The Italian Job, and a host of others). Wahlberg can play a good guy as well as he can a bad guy. But rarely does he play a vulnerable character or a character that doesn’t look like an all-star for a least a good chunk of the movie. Without revealing too much, I will say that this is one of Wahlberg’s most insecure and vulnerable characters. It’s also a role he doesn’t overplay, which, I think, would have been very easy to do. While I didn’t love everything about this movie, I certainly liked it. I would recommend it to all Wahlberg fans or fans looking for a light drama, light crime movie that you don’t have to overthink or take too seriously to enjoy.

I felt like this was a fairly basic story. The Gambler is a remake of a 1974 James Caan movie by the same name. There isn’t a whole lot more than meets the eye, but sometimes it’s good to have a popcorn flick that feels real but at the same time doesn’t allow you to become too invested. Sometimes you are looking for a movie that isn’t very believable in your everyday life but could still be realistic if you sat back and thought about it. The Gambler is that film. Wahlberg stars as Jim Bennett, an English 101 university professor/gambling addict. He is not a happy man, evidenced by his lack of success in the gambling arena and his less than enthusiastic persona when teaching his students. We first meet Jim at an underground casino. He brings $100,000 in cash and proceeds to lose it all while playing Blackjack in one sitting. He then proceeds to borrow money and lose all of that too. Before the movie is even 15 minutes old, Jim is $240,000 in debt with no real hope of getting out of it. We learn his gambling addiction is real and is a driving force in his life.

Jessica Lange (Blue Sky, Tootsie) plays Jim’s mother. It is a throwaway role, and, sadly, Lange wasted her efforts on this movie when anybody could have sufficed as Jim’s overbearing mom. He lives at home because he has no money to his name. Whatever money he does earn through his teaching job seems to go straight to his gambling addiction. He can’t seem to help himself. Even on a couple of occasions, he heads straight to the underground casinos when he gets money to pay off his debt. He brings connected with a couple of loan sharks, first a man named Neville (Michael K. Williams – television’s The Wire, 12 Years a Slave) and then a man named Frank (John Goodman – Flight, Argo). Both are willing to loan Jim money under certain circumstances. But, just like any lender, they want the full pay plus interest. And if Jim cannot deliver, it will cost him his life (or even more). He ends up owing both of these men significant sums of money in addition to the owner of the casino that we meet in the first 10 minutes of the film. Each time he has a chance to pay off his debts, he cannot help but wager it in the hopes of getting more. This is a focal point of the movie and emphasizes that his addiction is both beyond his control and his means to sustain life for himself.

It’s an agonizing film at times. We don’t know whether to like Jim or not. He can come across as a real ass sometimes. And it’s not like he’s had to fight his way to be successful. His family comes from money. Jim’s mother has a tennis court and a pool at his house. Jim is a published author, albeit self-admittedly, an unsuccessful one. He seems to have given up on that dream. He does not like his job teaching the lowest level English class that his university offers, even telling his students that the only reason they are in his class is that they have to be. He can be passionate at times, but some of his lessons are life lessons and not related to content. He’ll end class early at other times, telling his students abruptly that they are kicked out. I thought it was odd for a professor who didn’t care much about his students to know all of their names still. I was a teacher for many years and a student for many more. A teacher who cares quickly learns their students’ names as fast as possible. A teacher who doesn’t care as much does not. At college, there is even less incentive to learn student names. In any case, this is a lesser point.

He knows two students quite well: Lamar (Anthony Kelley), a junior basketball player who is the star of the team and has a promising career but is hiding a knee issue. Though he is told to stay another year (to help his draft position), he wants to go pro immediately because he is hiding a bad knee. He wants to secure that first-round contract with guaranteed money before discovering that he has a bad knee. For whatever reason, he seeks Jim out for advice. Lamar has had Jim as a teacher for numerous courses in his college career. The other student of note in his class is Amy (Brie Larson – The Spectacular Now, Rampart), the one student in his class who Jim sees as having promise. She also works at the underground casino that Jim frequents, though this is something of which the two do not speak.

Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 8/10
Character Chemistry 7.5/10
Acting 7.5/10
Screenplay 7/10
Directing  7.5/10
Cinematography 7.5/10
Sound 7.5/10
Hook and Reel 8/10
Universal Relevance 8.5/10 (gambling addiction is real…especially with the ease of online gambling)
77.5%

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