Tuesday you will see one of the best gambling movies ever to be released on DVD

OWNING MAHOWNY
**** (R)


May 16, 2003

Mahowny: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Lisa: Minnie Driver
Casino Manager: John Hurt
Bookie: Maury Chaykin

Sony Pictures Classics presents a film directed by Richard Kwietniowski. Written by Maurice Chauvet. Rated R (for language and some sexuality). Running time: 107 minutes.

BY ROGER EBERT


"Owning Mahowny" is about a man seized helplessly with tunnel vision, in the kind of tunnel that has no light at either end. He is a gambler. Cut off temporarily by his bookie, he asks incredulously, "What am I supposed to do? Go out to the track and watch ?" Given the means to gamble, he gambles--thoughtless of the consequences, heedless of the risks, caught in the vise of a power greater than himself. Like all addictive gamblers, he seeks the sensation of losing more money than he can afford. To win a great deal before losing it all back again creates a kind of fascination: Such gamblers need to confirm over and over that they cannot win.

The film is based on the true story of a Toronto bank vice president who began by stealing exactly as much as he needed to clear his debts at the track ($10,300) and ended by taking his bank for $10.2 million. So intent is he on this process that he rarely raises his voice, or his eyes, from the task at hand. Philip Seymour Hoffman, that fearless poet of implosion, plays the role with a fierce integrity, never sending out signals for our sympathy because he knows that Mahowny is oblivious to our presence. Like an artist, an athlete or a mystic, Mahowny is alone within the practice of his discipline.

There have been many good movies about gambling, but never one that so single-mindedly shows the gambler at his task. Mahowny has just been rewarded at work with a promotion and a raise. He drives a clunker even the parking lot attendants kid him about. His suits amuse his clients. He is engaged to Lisa (Minnie Driver), a teller who is the very embodiment of a woman who might be really pretty if she took off those glasses and did something about her hair.

He is so absorbed in gambling that even his bookie (Maury Chaykin) tries to cut him off, to save himself the trouble of making threats to collect on the money Mahowny owes him. "I can't do business like this," the bookie complains, and at another point, when Mahowny is so rushed, he only has time to bet $1,000 on all the home teams in the National League and all the away teams in the American, the bookie finds this a breach of ethics: He is in business to separate the gambler from his money, yes, but his self-respect requires that the gambler to make reasonable bets.

When Mahowny moves up a step by stealing larger sums and flying to Atlantic City to lose them, he encounters a more ruthless and amusing professional. John Hurt plays the manager of the casino like a snake fascinated by the way a mouse hurries forward to be eaten. Hurt has seen obsessive gamblers come and go and is familiar with all the manifestations of their sickness, but this Mahowny brings a kind of grandeur to his losing.

The newcomer is quickly singled out as a high-roller, comped with a luxury suite, offered French cuisine and tickets to the Pointer Sisters, but all he wants to do is gamble ("and maybe ... some ribs, no sauce, and a Coke?"). Hurt sends a hooker to Mahowny's room, and a flunky reports back: "The only woman he's interested in is Lady Luck." Certainly Mahowny forgets his fiancee on a regular basis, standing her up, disappearing for weekends, even taking her to Vegas and then forgetting that she is upstairs waiting in their suite. (The fiancee is a classic enabler, excusing his lapses, but Vegas is too much for her; she tries to explain to him that when she saw the size of the suite she assumed they had come to Vegas to get married: "That's what normal people do in Vegas.")

It is impossible to like Mahowny but easy to identify with him, if we have ever had obsessions of our own. Like all addicts of anything, he does what he does because he does it. "He needs to win in order to get more money to lose," one of the casino professionals observes.

Of course he will eventually be caught. He knows it, we know it, but being caught is beside the point. The point is to gamble as long as he can before he is caught. Mahowny refers at one point to having had a lot of luck, and he is referring not to winning, but to being able to finance a great deal of gambling at a level so high that, asked by a psychiatrist to rate the excitement on a scale of zero to 100, he unhesitatingly answers, "100." And his greatest excitement in life outside of gambling? "20."

Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance is a masterpiece of discipline and precision. He hardly ever raises his head from the task at hand, or his voice from the detached reserve of a--well, of a bank functionary. He spends a lot of time adjusting his glasses or resting his fingers on his temples, as if to enhance his tunnel vision. He never meets the eye of the camera, or anyone else. Even when a casino security guard is firmly leading his fiancee away from his table, he hardly looks up to notice that she is there, or to say a word in his defense. He is ... gambling.

The movie has none of the false manipulation of most gambling movies, in which the actors signal their highs and lows. Hoffman understands that for this gambler, it is not winning or losing, but all process.

The movie, written by Maurice Chauvet, has been directed by Richard Kwietniowski, whose only other feature was "Love and Death on Long Island" (1998). That one also starred John Hurt, playing a reclusive British literary intellectual who becomes as obsessed as Mahowny, but with an erotic fixation. So unworldly he does not own a television and never goes to the movies, the Hurt character takes refuge from the rain in a cinema, finds himself watching a teenage comedy starring Jason Priestley, and becomes so fascinated by this young man that he keeps a scrapbook like a star-struck teenager and eventually travels to Long Island just in the hopes of meeting him.

We get the impression that the Hurt character has been unaware of his homosexuality and indeed even his sexuality before being thunderstruck by this sudden fixation. In both films, Kwietniowski understands that conscious choice has little to do with his characters, that risk and humiliation are immaterial, that once they are locked in on the subjects of their obsessions, they have no choice but to hurry ahead to their dooms.



Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

seen by accident 2 movie oneticket outstanding

Here is a quote from the book "The Odds".
"A lot of gamblers say the action replaces sex, but I really think they mean it replaces relationships and fear of socializing.We're all outcasts and gambling occupies our time and we get paid for it.
For me for sure it was a way to make money and be by myself.Now, its become an obsession.I don't think it's an addiction.I don't think.But then again,I have no life."
-Allan Boston

By the way who do you sick fxcks like today?

Miami / TB / Phili

Looks like a good movie. Thanks for the recommendation.

SOUNDS LIKE A MUST SEE!!!!

Thanks Harrington, will look forward to seeing this movie.

thanks ive been waiting for it to come to stores
James Rocchi, Netflix
"Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a quietly compelling performance as a financial whiz with plenty to lose."
If you asked me to name some of our greatest physical actors, what leaps to mind isn't the muscled mass of Vin Diesel or the lithe, limber charm of Will Smith, but instead the bundled, hesitant presence of Philip Seymour Hoffman. In many of his films, Hoffman's lines are at a minimum, but his body language -- the hunches, the gasps and the furtive headshakes -- speaks a thousand words. Owning mahowny takes advantage of Hoffman's coiled, curdled energy to tense, terse effect.
Real-life bank officer Dan mahowny was on the fast track in the lending division, rising up the ladder and arranging multimillion lines of credit for his clients at the beginning of the 1980s economic boom. He was also at the mercy of a gambling addiction that ruled his life with an iron fist. At the start of the film, mahowny owes his bookie tens of thousands in cash, even as the bank entrusts him with access to and authority over hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. mahowny knows exactly what he's doing when he begins a series of embezzlements; the better question is whether he knows why. ?
Between Hoffman's performance and the unfolding of Maurice Chauvet's screenplay, watching Owning mahowny is like watching a fragile china plate fall to the floor in slow motion. Everything is going to come apart, and the wait is going to agonize us. In fact, Owning mahowny's pacing feels as if it's meandering on its way to the inevitable finale, but director Richard Kwietniowski (Life and Death on Long Island) gets fine performances from the supporting cast that are only made better opposite Hoffman's excellence, so we never quite start tapping our watches waiting for the end to arrive.
John Hurt is Victor Foss, the unctuous Atlantic City casino manager who extends every courtesy to mahowny so he can better enjoy losing money at the tables. Minnie Driver (whose "Canadian" accent seems to come by way of Fargo) is mahowny's too-patient girlfriend Belinda, and veteran character actor Maury Chaykin surprises as bookmaker Frank Perlin. Perlin doesn't like the way mahowny makes capricious bets for huge sums with little or no thought (betting on all the home teams in football's AFC and all the away teams in the NFC to win, for example), but he'll take his money. ?
At heart, Owning mahowny lies at the intersection of emotional wounds and economic wrongs. The madness of the gambler has attracted authors from Damon Runyon to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Hoffman's performance captures the grim obsession of the compulsive. Chauvet and Kwietniowski also try to make a connection between mahowny's crimes and the profligate business practices of the Reagan era -- when it seemed as if the entire financial sector made the same mistake as mahowny, forgetting the difference between money and cash and never thinking the bill for the fun would come due -- but they don't quite invest the time to make that connection stick.
Owning mahowny may distract you with its TV-movie-level cinematography, Driver's showy wig and a running time that seems about 10 minutes too long, but it's still a great showcase for Hoffman's singular, signature acting skills, and a very nice demonstration of how easily a person's private sins can become public concerns.
Owning mahowny is based on a book by Gary Ross that documents the true story of Brian Molony, a bank officer who was a compulsive gambler and embezzled millions of dollars to support his habit. For unknown reasons, Brian Molony here is renamed Dan mahowny (Philip Seymour Hoffman), just promoted to assistant branch manager of a large Toronto bank. Early shots of a huge vault door swinging open and omnipresent security cameras establish the physical care with which the bank's assets are guarded. But there's always a human factor to security and mahowny is nothing if not human. He drives a  dirty, sputtering old heap of a car, wears ill-fitting suits, and cautions his girlfirend, Belinda (Minnie Driver), about a proposed dinner out that might run more than thirty dollars.
    Smart, efficient and respected by his boss, mahowny overcomes management resistance to granting a loan to a wealthy client by quietly pointing out to them how much money they are already making on the account. A large line of credit is granted which later provides mahowny's opportunity for skimming and kiting. More important is the trust of his boss who lightly raises questions about various transactions and then is easily satisfied with mahowny's answers, blithely signing off in reliance on the word of his subordinate. Big mistake.
    For mahowny is a compulsive gambler. Compulsive gambling  is recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as an impulse control disorder, in the same category with kleptomania and pyromania. This isn't just a guy who puts a bit more on the craps table than he can afford. It's a guy who is out of control. He's utterly preoccupied with gambling, he needs to gamble with increasing amounts of money in order to achieve the desired high, he lies to those around him to conceal his habit, and he puts his career and personal life at risk in order to pursue his compulsion. Owning mahowny draws a textbook case of the disorder in this otherwise most ordinary man.
    Starting with a local bookie, mahowny moves on to a casino at Atlantic City where a smarmy and manipulative manager (John Hurt) is all too pleased to encourage a big player. As mahowny's losses multiply, he embezzles ever larger sums from the bank, playing ever larger stakes at the tables. He has a minor scare when a bank auditor raises some questions, but mahowny manages to finesse that situation and postpone the inevitable.
    Hoffman is particularly adept at portraying somewhat nerdy characters with inner conflicts, such as the young widower overcome with grief in Love Liza and the schlumpy public school teacher in 25th Hour. Here he etches a portrait of an ordinary guy with an extraordinary problem with his usual conviction. It's a convincing and subtle portrayal, but also raises the question whether Hoffman is in trouble of starting to repeat himself. Driver is a pleasant surprise as Belinda. With an American accent, wearing a blond wig done in an impeccably tacky hairdo, she is loyal to her man even after enough repeated betrayals to drive a Methodist to drink. She strikes just the right note of ordnariness to make the pairing of the two seem credible.
   It's Hoffman's character study that centers the film, but there's only so much that can be done with that in terms of narrative drive. What suspense there is lies in how he will be caught and that is rather weakly plotted in the script. Wire taps seem to be carried on by Canadian authorities with a good deal of freedom and are the source of the leads that ultimately bring down the house of cards. The mushrooming of mahowny's betting and his repeated thefts of funds from the bank provide a certain intrigue and momentum, but failing any real interest in the investigative side of the story it does tend to lag noticeably in midpoint.
Heres the book review- but its out of print and hard to find
Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony
This is the story of Brian Molony who embezzled over $10 million from his employers to feed his insatiable appetite for gambling. The book investigates how an assistant manager could write scores of fraudulent loans and not be detected, how he could function competantly on one level when on another level he was completely out of control. To his customers he was decisive and helpful. To his friends he was a quiet, drily humorous man who enjoyed watching sport on TV. To his girlfriends he was shy but engaging. But none of them knew about the man who bet $5000 on each of 40 college football games with teams he'd never heard of; who put $500,000 on the Super Bowl and then cheered the other side to make the finish more exciting and who won a million in a weekend and lost it again in a night. Gary Ross is Senior Editor of "Saturday Night" magazine and has won many prizes, including the National Magazine Award for his short stories. He has also written "Always Tip the Dealer".

Alan you sicko Chicago Art from Vegas

should be a good one....thanks harry for the heads up