You smell like an affiliate.

Runner Runner

(2013)

There are plenty of decent gambling movies. It’s a natural subject for offering conflict and drama, winners and losers. Most follow well-established structural rules that take in mentors and apprentices, arch-nemeses and addicted best pals. It should actually be surprising if you are unable to eke a certain amount of tension from any given scenario, be it pool or cards; there’s an ever bountiful fountain of slow-burning tension on tap, as the protagonist dutifully gets in over their head. Writers Brian Koppleman and David Levien managed it with Rounders, a patchy affair that sagged under the weight of its clichés but ultimately won through on the strength of its casting. Runner Runner has no such luck.

Justin Timberlake is, at best, a passable screen presence, in that he’s been okay in a few things where he was either musically inclined (Inside Llewyn Davis) or the object of derision (Bad Teacher). But he isn’t a reliable dramatic presence (he was the weak link in the otherwise very good The Social Network), and he’s very far from being a movie star. Aside from his lack of chops, his screen presence is lacklustre; naturally unsympathetic and a bearing a vague untrustworthiness. It might be those pointy eyes. Perhaps Brad Furman and his casting directors were subconsciously conscious of this, and thought he’d be perfect for Richie Furst (this movie has awful character names; they might work if it was a comedy), the morally suspect Princeton masters student who runs a scam to get undergraduates to sign up to online gambling websites (the opening credits informing us of the wash of student gambling addictions is as close the picture comes to relevance, despite repeated attempts to summon the spectre of the global financial crisis). Richie used to have a Wall Street career, so he’s straightaway one of the enemy, and when he is danger of being expelled for non-payment of fees he risks everything in an online poker game. And loses. But wait a minute; he could tell the game was rigged. Because he’s brainy. So Richie sets off to Costa Rica to confront the owner of Midnight Black (the website), one Ivan Block (Ben Affleck).

Yes, Ivan Block. Good grief. So Timberlake is the Charlie Sheen to Affleck’s… Michael Douglas (his dialogue is very much sub-Gordon Gecko ruthless). Credit to Ben for attempting to ascend to the summit of the elder supporting man/villain, but he never really nailed the leading roles to start with. The result is two listless performances at the centre of the picture. Timberlake, twitchy and nasal, is in thrall to Big Beefy Ben. Who seems to have decided a rash of stubble will make do for characterisation (this is definitely one where he’s acting with his lantern jaw). I don’t mind Affleck per se, but whenever he’s onscreen I can’t help but instantly think there’s someone better they could have cast. There’s a blunt, dulled quality to him. Bringing up the rear is poor Gemma Arterton in the PA/girlfriend part of Rebecca (we’re told she built this business with Ivan, but neither she nor the script is selling the idea). Still Gemma got a free tan out of it, so it’s not all bad. John Heard, as Richie’s dad, has about two scenes. He got off lightly.

Richie has his foot in the door and succumbs to Ivan’s offer of an “in” on his flashy lifestyle. So we run through the standard plays of seduction (money and girls), intimations of dodgy dealings (Anthony Mackie as an FBI agent attempting to secure Richie’s services) and finally disillusionment as the devil’s dealings are revealed in full. It’s not necessarily what you do with this kind of movie, it’s the way that you do it. And director Brad Furman is all at sea, with only Mauro Fiore’s burnished photography of Puerto Rico (doubling) to stamp any personality on the proceedings. If there was any snappy patter in here it’s buried by the faint performers. There are references to Ponzi schemes, to underline Block’s nefariousness, but we understood he was actually a wannabe Bond villain as soon as we were introduced to his pet crocodiles. Richie’s eventual discovery of a conscience (that voice in his head is not fear, it’s his conscience; they liked the line so much, they used it twice!) is largely unconvincing because Timberlake is unable to convey genuine penitence (he’s also rewarded for his vague good deeds, par for the course in this sort of thing but uncomfortable when the lead fails to garner sympathy). The worst thing about a scam movie is for the scam to leave you shrugging, and nothing in the final act twists leaves any impression. Firstly because we don’t give a hoot about anyone here, and a secondly because the intrigues are so incredibly weak they barely register.

I wasn’t terribly convinced by Brad Furman’s last film, The Lincoln Lawyer. It may have been instrumental in Matthew McConaughey’s career comeback, and it possessed a decent enough script, but Furman seemed to do everything he could to work against its dramatic potential. He’s more pedestrian in his approach here, but no more successful in securing our interest. As for the leads, it will be interesting to see whether David Fincher can elicit an acceptable Affleck turn with the upcoming Gone Girl. He generally has a sure touch, but he isn’t infallible (Timberlake, Jake Gyllenhaal). Timberlake, well it’s hard to see him eking out a reputable career as a muso-turned-actor on the level of, say Wahlberg. Casting youthful-ish leads in this kind of morality tale, who lack substance, brings to mind the late ‘80s-early ‘90s trend for Brat Packers in iconic roles. Those were probably more misses than hits (Mobsters) but invariably there was someone with some genuine charisma in the line up (Emilio Estevez, for example). Runner Runner is sunk by a tired script, indifferently directed and performed gracelessly by bland leads.

Comments

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s first serial-killer screenplay to get made, The Eyes of Laura Mars came out nearly three months before Halloween. You know, the movie that made the director’s name. And then some. He wasn’t best pleased with the results of The Eyes of Laura Mars, which ended up co-credited to David Zelag Goodman ( Straw Dogs , Logan’s Run ) as part of an attempt by producer Jon Peters to manufacture a star vehicle for then-belle Barbra Streisand: “ The original script was very good, I thought. But it got shat upon ”. Which isn’t sour grapes on Carpenter’s part. The finished movie bears ready evidence of such tampering, not least in the reveal of the killer (different in Carpenter’s conception). Its best features are the so-uncleanly-you-can-taste-it 70s New York milieu and the guest cast, but even as an early example of the sub-genre, it’s burdened by all the failings inherit with this kind of fare.

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

To survive a war, you gotta become war.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (SPOILERS?) I’d like to say it’s mystifying that a film so bereft of merit as Rambo: First Blood Part II could have finished up the second biggest hit of 1985. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was, at minimum, a solid action movie, rather than an interminable bore. But the movie struck a chord somewhere, somehow. As much as the most successful picture of that year, Back to the Future , could be seen to suggest moviegoers do actually have really good taste, Rambo rather sends a message about how extensively regressive themes were embedding themselves in Reaganite, conservative ‘80s cinema (to be fair, this is something one can also read into Back to the Future ), be those ones of ill-conceived nostalgia or simple-minded jingoism, notional superiority and might. The difference between Stallone and Arnie movies starts right here; self-awareness. Audiences may have watched R ambo in the same way they would a Schwarzenegger picture, but I’m

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

One final thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.

Vertigo (1958) (SPOILERS) I’ll readily admit my Hitchcock tastes broadly tend to reflect the “consensus”, but Vertigo is one where I break ranks. To a degree. Not that I think it’s in any way a bad film, but I respect it rather than truly rate it. Certainly, I can’t get on board with Sight & Sound enthroning it as the best film ever made (in its 2012’s critics poll). That said, from a technical point of view, it is probably Hitch’s peak moment. And in that regard, certainly counts as one of his few colour pictures that can be placed alongside his black and white ones. It’s also clearly a personal undertaking, a medley of his voyeuristic obsessions (based on D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac).

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog