Review ‘The Gambler’ From The Editor

In this remake, “The Gambler” makes a transition from East Coast to West Coast, grimly suicidal winner who wants to lose to a slick adrenaline-junky who gets the girl who surely deserves better than him.

While the original movie began with us hearing voices of men playing blackjack, this new version, written by William Monahan, begins with a slow jam (“That Glow” by St. Paul and the Broken Bones).

I lost my sincereness for that time they been away
I’ve carry all on this side of road
To mine rest in peace
No I am away and high
Yes she’s gone with someone else
Now I wish it was me that testify
I give it all, set me free,
They don’ t mean they don’t mean
That carry it’s burning inside of me
Ooh how it’s rolling, well she’s gone with somebody else
How I wish it was me
How I wish it was me

The film is based on a (better) 1974 movie from Karel Reisz and James Toback, and centers on Jim Bennett, an incredibly obnoxious English professor and degenerate gambler, who loses huge sums of money in illegal games of chance.

Bennett’s favorite game is blackjack; his favorite bet is “double or nothing.” This is not just a sucker’s bet, but a suicide’s; to play it, over and over as Bennett does, is like playing six rounds of Russian roulette. There’s no way you’re going to get up from that table.

But Bennett seems to want to die, or at least punish himself, and so he keeps diving further and further into the abyss.

When the red BMW M1 pulls up and the engine turns off, the music stops. We’ve been listening into the reality of Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg). He’s a man with dark black hair who wears nice suits and walks into a high class gambling establishment with a certain swagger that is temporarily put on pause when he sees a familiar face. He knows one of the waitresses, Amy Phillips (Brie Larson).

She’s young, blonde and dressed in a black cheongsam that glimmers just enough to suggest glamour but not too shiny to suggest sex on sale. This wiggle dress looks individually fitted and requires a high slit and high heels. That’s hard work and eye candy for men who don’t seem focused on grabbing asses. The ethnically mixed crowd of men and women are there for some serious gambling.

The original “The Gambler” took place in New York City where a car is a luxury and driving around and leaving the top down of a convertible seems risky at best and foolhardy at worst. In Los Angeles, to get those scenic drive down stretches of coastal roads and then through Koreatown to the Jewelry District, you need a car. No metro system will take you there and get you back in time for your classes.

As the gambler, James Caan was in the hole for $44,000. Now that’s an unlucky number in Asia.

For Bennett, he’s betting $20,000 and $40,000 on one blackjack hand. When his luck is up, he pushes it, not holding back. That kind of risk is breathtaking and he attracts crowds and that seems to feed his ego.

It makes the movie a hard one to stay interested in. In the original film James Caan was half Dostoevsky character, half Gamblers Anonymous newbie; we saw the intentional self-degradation but also the impossible, unquenchable craving.

But here, Bennett — played by Mark Wahlberg — seems as mechanical as that spinning roulette wheel, or ticking clock. Every dollar that comes into his hands he throws away, while we sit and watch. It’s not that he’s out of control, either — he’s in complete control. He’s just determined to destroy himself.

There have been a few movies like that — “Leaving Las Vegas” comes to mind — but they’re hard to pull off. If someone is really that intent on self-destruction, why should we be his audience?

So much of the examination of an addicts self-destructive behavior is lost in “The Gambler” 2014.

Although Camus’ “L’Etranger” is also brought up, what is lost of the comparison of “The Gambler” with Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Gambler.” What is lost is the tension between the protagonist and his grandfather, what is lost is the slight misogyny when Axel’s and his grandfather discuss his girlfriend as if she was a prize broodmare or how Axel uses a woman as an excuse to have a fight. Yet in 2014, the gambler picks a relationship that is ethically inappropriate. He begins dating a current student but that fits in with the Hollywood misogyny. Older male star with a much younger female love interest.

In the original “The Gambler,” Axel’s love interest was played by Lauren Hutton who was actually older than Caan but only by a few years.

“The Gambler” in 2014 has no lessons about addiction. Bennett gets to beat the big bosses behind illegal games and gets the girl. He looks only slightly worse for wear, but healthy enough to run from Koreatown to the Jewelry District (roughly 3 miles) and then on to the apartment where his girlfriend is staying. Is this a happily ever after.

Wahlberg, though, is always watchable, even hiding behind his sunglasses. He swaggers sitting down, and although he comes across as the worst English teacher ever, he does look like the sort of person who would pick a fight with three bigger guys. (And then, after picking himself up off the floor, mouth off at them again.)