The Gambler (2014)

Watching the Movie: 

Gorgeous cinematography and some really intense situations that make you wish you could reach into the screen, grab Marky Mark by the throat and scream "FUCKING STOP IT YOU MORON" even more than you probably already do for any number of potential reasons. John Goodman gives his best non Walter Sobchak/Coach Harris/Dan Conner performance. Literally seeing a short reel of the "Best Dialogue" from this movie is the only reason I ever wanted to watch it. Other than that, it at least serves as a warning to never let Mark Wahlburg and Brie Larson ever be in the same room ever again, especially when the former clearly doesn't give a shit. Wahlburg in this movie makes his performance in "Max Payne" (2008) look intense and dramatic. 

Screening the Film: 

Primary focus is on empowerment and control, or lack thereof. Addiction, compulsion, and dealing with same. Destiny and what, if anything, individuals can do to defeat it. Talent vs effort vs desire. Higher learning and education roles. Hope; more specifically a lack of hope. Acceptance, even if the situation being accepted is not the one that actually exists. Contentment and comfort, specifically the lack thereof. Personal responsibility acceptance and decision making. Freedom, both defining it and achieving it (Frank defines it in security, Jim defines it by having absolutely NO expectations or attachments to anyone), and like most things gambling related, luck vs skill and risk vs certainty. Spirit, will, and conviction of belief. Obligations, expectations and the accountability that comes with same. There also is a lot of imagery about hypocrisy and self-awareness.

Best Dialogue:

 

Frank: Sit down. Do you drink? I don’t remember if you drink. Of course there’s drink and DRINK I drink but I haven’t been drunk since Reagan was president. I got a DUI. And in jail I actually fell down and pissed my pants. You don’t need to do that twice. I am telling you this so you know that everybody’s been there.

Big Ernie: Everybody’s been there.

Frank: Once. If you’re there twice...after having been there once....I can’t help you. You know I listen to the drunks, and it’s like you’re listening to a fairy story about a fight with a fuckin’ monster when the actual title of the story is “I can’t handle my liquor,” by Mister Crybaby.

Big Ernie: Amen.

Frank: I don’t know, maybe they have a problem, but fuck 'em if they do, cause I don’t. Which leads me to ask: are you pulling this shit just now, or forever. I mean do you have a “problem”? Wah wah wah like some little fucking girl wah wah wah, or some Somali who can’t process that there’s no food where they live, or are you just fucked up temporarily because you’re temporarily fuckin’ stupid.

Big Ernie: Are you long business or short business?

Jim: What’s the difference?

Frank: I need to know if you have the fuckin’ brains to walk when it’s time to walk. People don’t. Ball players who can’t play any more, assholes trying to maintain a standard of living not possible any more. Lot of them around. I’ve seen you be half a million dollars up.

Jim: I’ve been up two and a half million dollars.

Frank: What you got on you?

Jim: Nothing

Frank: What you put away?

Jim: Nothing

Frank: You get up two and a half million dollars, any asshole in the world knows what to do. You get a house with a twenty-five year roof, an indestructible Jap economy shitbox, and you put the rest into the system at three to five percent to pay your taxes, and that’s your base, get me, that’s your Fortress of Fuckin’ Solitude, that puts you for the rest of your life at a level of “fuck you”. Someone wants you do do something? “Fuck you”. Boss pisses you off? “Fuck you”. Own your house, have a couple bucks in the bank, don’t drink, that’s all I have to say to anybody at any social level. Did your grandfather take risks?

Jim: Yes.

Frank: I can guarantee he did it from a position of “fuck you”. The wise man’s life is based around “fuck you”. The United States of America is based on “fuck you”. You’re a king? You have an Army, the greatest Navy in the history of the world? “Fuck you, blow me”. We’ll fuck it up ourselves. Which we have done. Beautiful fuck you position, lost forever. King George the Third looks like a fuckin’ birthday present.

(to waitress)

This is the grandson of the seventeenth richest man in California.

Waitress: Does he drink?

Frank: What he wants is money because he doesn’t know when to say “That’s it, I’m two million ahead, fuck it, fuck you, I have a car and a house and a family, it’s all paid for, fuck you.”

Big Ernie: Even I did that. of course it’s out by Pearblossom

Jim: I’ll have a beer. Just like anybody else thank you.

Waitress: What kind?

Jim: Any kind.

Waitress: We got thirty-seven beers. Don’t fuckin’ put it on me.

Frank: But he did put it on you miss.

(back to Jim)

You still owe large, two places you shouldn’t. Why do you want door number three?

Jim: How else do I get out?

Frank: Time payments, sell your sperm, sell your ass, how the fuck should I know? I am of the universe and you know what it’s worth.

Big Ernie: It’s worth plenty.

Frank: If I give you this money, and you don’t pay me back, there are no rules. You never get to say “fuck you” to anybody ever. You’ll get me not just what you owe me from your family, you’ll get me their accounts so I can have them vacuumed from Russia. You jump off a bridge, you can do it knowing that I’ll kill your entire bloodline. Do you understand the gravity of your situation?

Jim: I understand.

Frank: You get up, you get out. 260 as requested.

(He holds out car keys)

Jim: What’s this?

Frank: This much money, what’s a car. What do you want to be able to say to me?

Jim: Fuck you.

The Bottom Line: 

I get what this movie is trying to do; hell I as much as anyone knows about doing incredibly dumb shit and then doubling down on it because once you're in for a penny, might as well be in for a pound. There have been plenty of films built around a message of self-destruction equaling freedom. The two that immediately come to mind "Leaving Las Vegas" (1995) and "Fight Club" (1999) both do it more meaningfully and memorably. But then there's the scene in best dialogue.

That four minutes and twenty-nine minutes and 700+ words should be shown to every human being on their 16th birthday because that's when you REALLY start fucking up life by the numbers. Everything that comes before it, ultimately are on your parents for not knowing better, at 16 life "puts it on you miss" and every choice comes with a potentially devastating outcome. 

This is a movie I really want to love. It feels like a decent intersection of art house cinema with popcorn theater actors. It should be a sold 4-4.5 star production. But of course, there's the issue of Mark Wahlburg, destroyer of all things good. Between him and the charisma vacuum that is Brie Larson, the value as a movie is hampered considerably. The scene above is an infinity out of five in terms of score, but it's also 4.5 minutes in a 1 hour, 50 minute movie. The rest of that movie does a LOT, some of it really good, some of it pretty clumsily, as such I cannot in good conscience go any higher than

3.75 out of 5