The Gambler - Movie Review

Who's In It?

Mark Wahlberg, Michael Kenneth Williams and John Goodman


What's It About?

Marky-Mark is a gambling man with a huge love for losing everything he gets, until his debt is breathing down his neck and must pay off 3 different crime bosses in a week.

Any Good? 

For some reason, this film felt like a cheap knock-off of something better in every aspect, even the soundtrack. Boasting the likes of wannabe-David Bowie, M83 (wannabe MGMT - be honest) and wannabe-Dean Martin sounds, I was less than impressed.

For some reason there was introduction of a lot of unnecessary characters too - while totally important to the plot they still didn't need to be given the amount of explaining they did and this just came off as padding to make the film longer than an hour and a half for me. One brilliant character for me was Frank the crime boss, he came off as totally menacing in a Jabba the Hutt way - which is why I assume they made John Goodman put on so much weight.

John Feelsgoodman.jpg as Frank 

For it's bad script and host of distracting side characters, the mains did their job pretty well. I love John Goodman in everything, which may make this stilted, but he delivered his flowery prose-like lines as gruff as he could, complete with a neck wobble. Michael Kenneth Williams was kinda awesome (he always is), but for some reason he was playing a "chilled" crime lord - one that prefers to say things like "come on man" than "I'm going to murder this ****".

While both too long and too deep (in a filler kind of way), the film is actually worth the watch for the gambling scenes. I found my mind wandering while sitting watching it but as soon as the cards came out I was watching every movement, thinking about the play I would have made, and generally just being exhausted by the tension of a card flipping or roulette spinning. If there was ever a movie to have on while you browse the internet, this would be - it for me.

Rating: