BEFORE: I don't really have a solid tie-in here, except that it's Kenny Rogers' birthday, and he was the original "Gambler", right? Or at least he had a song about knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em, if memory serves. Kenny passed away in March, so this one's for you, big guy.
John Goodman carries over from "Captive State", and since I already used John Goodman as a link back in January (that's totally legal by my rules, to use somebody twice in one year) he's going to be well-represented at the end of the year. He won't win the arbitrary contest, but six films will be a nice showing for him.
THE PLOT: Literature professor and gambler Jim Bennett's debt causes him to borrow money from his mother and a loan shark. Further complicating his situation is his relationship with one of his students. Will Bennett risk his life for a second chance?
AFTER: Wow, remember casinos? I mean, sure, concerts and movie theaters and beer & BBQ festivals, but does anyone remember casinos? In a typical year my wife and probably would have been on two 3-day trips to Atlantic City by now, or maybe one to A.C. and one to Foxwoods, but as it stands now, I haven't been to a casino since Christmas Eve last year, when we stopped in Foxwoods on our way to my parents' house. (They had recently re-opened the buffet in 2019, too, because it was being renovated when we were there on Christmas Eve 2018.). Sure, we COULD go to Atlantic City now, probably get a great deal on a room at whatever casino we want, but is that a great idea? Even if they practice all the new Covid safety protocols, you have to figure that the casinos were closed for months, and they have to make up for lost time, so there's no way those slots are going to pay out a jackpot, they're probably all rigged to pay out as little as possible. (Yes, they can adjust the payout odds on slot machines.) The best bet right now is probably the table games, because the odds of winning at blackjack or craps are the same as they've always been, the only problem there is, I don't play table games, I play quarter slots. Quarter slots often end up being cheaper than penny slots, because those penny machines make you bet like 100 or 200 pennies at a time, so, really, they're dollar slots.
I'm too chicken to play blackjack, I'd rather lose $40 in a couple slot machines and then make up for it at the buffet - only there are NO BUFFETS right now, so what's the goddamn point? This time a year ago my wife and I were planning out the itinerary for our Vegas Casino Crawl that took place in October. Because we stayed at three different hotels, we were able to carve up the city into little sections and hit 3 or 4 casinos in each section per day - so overall we gambled in 23 different casinos, and I ate at five different buffets (she only made it to four, she was sick the last two days so I had to hit the last one solo.). OK, so my "Ocean's 11" plan to bankrupt the casinos by eating all of their food seems pretty impossible in retrospect, but I gave it the old college try. And I was actually up $100 on the second day, but I lost money overall, because that's how Vegas works, that's how gambling works. One casino let me win $100, but I had six more days in town, what was I supposed to do, stop gambling? I would have been ahead in money but then also way behind on fun.
Plus, there's human nature involved - if you win $50 or $100 after just a little bit of gambling, then by extension if you play some more, you're going to win some more! The more you play, the more chances you have to win! Let's keep going until I see a jackpot! That small win is like a drug, you feel elated for a short period of time, and you want to feel that again, only bigger. Only it's going to cost you if you keep playing, though right after the small win, you're playing with the casino's money, so who cares? Then that goes away and very soon, you're back where you started, but that's OK, because another win will put you back on top, right? Just give me another minute, no, wait, it's probably that machine, I used up all the good spins, let me move over to this machine over here, this one looks like it wants to give me money and....no? Nothing? That's OK, that's OK, I'm just getting warmed up, I need a drink, that'll help and maybe let me change another $100, get some fresh money in the game, that'll do it. There, I just won a dollar, though it cost me $20 to get that, it's a sign my luck is turning around. Yes, honey, I know we have show tickets, but I just need to play a little longer and win back the money I just lost, will you just give me a damn minute already?
Once you step away from the slot machine or the blackjack table, you may have that moment of clarity - this is always how it was going to end, because you didn't stop when you had the chance. Actually the first mistake was starting to play, thinking you were going to win. Then the second mistake happened when you were up over where you started, and you didn't stop. Then the third mistake was putting down more money to try to get back to where you started, and that didn't work either. Sure, you're smarter now, you know to walk away when you're up, only you're not up any more. So the fourth mistake was then when you did walk away, you came back later when you were feeling luckier, and you figured things would be different. Do I need to go on?
A smarter strategy would be to only put money at risk that you're willing to lose - I put $20 in a slot machine and I'm prepared to lose it, so if my total starts drifting down towards $5, I'll play that money until it's gone. But if my total gets higher than $20, even by a dollar or a quarter, I'll cash out. Because any win, even a small win, is a win. And if I can do that three or four times in a row, then three or four small wins might total a large win. I'd had large wins, but those are rare, few and far-between. So overall after 8 days in Vegas I was way down, but we did do other things around town - the Mob Museum, the Neon Museum, great restaurants (Hell's Kitchen and Oscar's at the Plaza on my birthday!), went up in the fake Eiffel Tower, the giant Ferris wheel, saw the Bellagio fountains, an exhibit of recovered Titanic artifacts, saw Legends in Concert. The only thing we did that was a repeat of our 2003 Vegas trip was going to the m&m's store.
Anyway, I was very excited about the trip before and (mostly) during, but it started wearing me down around day 6. The food was phenomenal throughout, including one night where we took a nap in the evening, woke up too late for a proper dinner, and found ourselves at Wahlburgers in the Bally complex. Yep, same day, we ate at Hell's Kitchen and Wahlburgers, which seems like opposite ends of the spectrum. Despite being owned by actor Mark Wahlberg and family, the chain still puts out a quality product - I got the SuperMelt, which was a burger on thick-cut bread, bacon, onions, pickles, and "government cheese". For some reason, the chain features the same cheese that used to be given out as surplus by the Feds in the Reagan era, to families on welfare. Well, since the Wahlberg clan had 9 kids being raised in a small house in Dorchester, MA, I guess they have fond memories of eating this particular sliced yellow cheese. But then, why make your customers have to eat it too? Surely there must be better cheeses available, so why not give the customers the option to improve their burgers? (I'll admit, the burger and tots were delicious, but really, any food in Vegas available after 10 pm is going to be appreciated and consumed with vigor. Sorry, I mean viggah.)
That cheese is its own form of gambling, if you think about it. But Wahlberg's character here is the worst kind of gambler, he won't stop, even when he's up. Everybody knows that you shouldn't always "Let it ride" because then you're always just one bad card away from losing your whole stake. Is it impressive that he wins three hands of blackjack in a row, turning $10,000 into $80,000? Well, sure, but losing on the fourth hand then wipes out all of his progress, so I would only have been impressed with him winning $79,000 if he had STOPPED. And therein lies the key to making money in a casino (an underground one here, but the principle is the same everywhere) - knowing when to walk away from the table. Nobody can predict the next hand, sure, so knowing when to walk away seems like a tricky thing, but here's my advice: if you're up $79,000, it's time to walk away. It's probably past time, you pushed your luck with that last hand, and it's a miracle that you haven't lost it all yet, therefore, it's the perfect time to quit while you're ahead. But Jim Bennett doesn't seem all that familiar with that phrase.
Sure, he's been through some stuff, his grandfather just died, he's on the outs with his mother, and he's got a dead-end job teaching literature at a college, where his students can't even stop texting long enough to listen to him, and even though his novel enjoyed some success and he was named one of the most promising young novelists of 2007, that was a while ago, and it seems inspiration has not struck twice. So this is where he finds himself, letting his winnings ride in an underground casino, just to, what, be able to feel something, anything? Even if that something is the terror that comes with owing one loanshark $200,000 and another one $50,000? And then visiting a third loanshark just to consolidate the debt, realizing that would put him even in more danger?
Even when he gets a hold of some money - his mother clears out one of her bank accounts just to get him off the hook - for some reason he doesn't take that money straight to one of the loan sharks to save his own life. Why? Because he's a gambler - he sees the potential in that bag of money, if he just takes it to a casino and puts it on the line, it could be so much more, like the solution to take care of all of his debts, not just one of them. So, that's what he does, and of course, he blows through it. Sure, he probably feels more alive, but meanwhile he's getting closer and closer to the opposite of that. The film is framed in a "countdown" sort of fashion, we're constantly reminded that there are "7 days to go" and then "6 days to go". Umm, until what, exactly? It's easy to fear the worst here, with the gambler playing all sides off against each other.
Earlier this year, "Uncut Gems" sort of used a similar format, with the lead character always thinking that one more bet would do the trick, if you keep increasing the size of the bets, there's the greater potential to wipe the slate clean. Sure, but there's also the potential for falling deeper and deeper into the hole. And like "Uncut Gems", the plot depends on the outcome of a sporting event - here the loansharks have realized the connection between Bennett and one of his students, who's the star player on the college's basketball team, and that suggests the possibility of fixing the game, which could help Bennett get rid of at least SOME of his debt. Totally illegal, but it's the risk he has to take, otherwise the loansharks will start going after his family, and also that talented student that he's started a relationship with. (Wow, this guy really does like to live dangerously - a relationship between a teacher and a student is like an automatic dismissal these days, right?)
This is the second film in a week to feature a relationship between a college professor and a student - the other one was "A Single Man". But it's the only film this month (probably this year) to be an adaptation of a Dostoevsky novella. This is true, but I'm not familiar with Dostoevsky's "The Gambler" - did Fyodor Dostoevsky know to not hit on 14? Actually, the first adaptation of this story was in the 1974 movie "The Gambler", written by James Toback and starring James Caan. So today's film is both an adaptation and a remake, and was directed by Rupert Wyatt, who also directed yesterday's film "Captive State". See what I mean, man? Everything is connected.... John Goodman was also in "Everybody's All American" with co-star Jessica Lange, and later in "Kong: Skull Island" with another co-star, Brie Larson.
Also starring Mark Wahlberg (last seen in "Daddy's Home 2"), Brie Larson (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Michael Kenneth Williams (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Jessica Lange (last seen in "The Postman Always Rings Twice"), Anthony Kelley, Alvin Ing (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Domenick Lombardozzi (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Emory Cohen (last seen in "The Place Beyond the Pines"), Steve Park (last seen in "State of Play"), George Kennedy (last seen in "Bandolero!"), Richard Schiff (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Andre Braugher (last heard in "Standing in the Shadows of Motown"), Lauren Weedman (last seen in "The Little Hours"), Josiah Blount, Griffin Cleveland, Da'Vone McDonald (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor").
RATING: 6 out of 10 cheerleaders
No comments:
Post a Comment