The Gambler (2014)
Directed by Rupert Wyatt
Literature professor Jim Bennett leads a secret life as a high-stakes gambler. Always a risk-taker, Bennett bets it all when he borrows from a gangster and offers his own life as collateral. Staying one step ahead, he pits his creditor against the operator of an illicit gambling ring while garnering the attention of Frank, a paternalistic loan shark. As his relationship with a student deepens, Bennett must risk everything for a second chance.
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What critics say influenced The Gambler
A disappointing thriller from Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt, The Gambler is a remake of the 1974 James Caan gem of the same name, which itself was loosely based on a 1867 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, one of the grandpapas of existentialism.
While stylishly composed and edited with music composed Jon Brion (and Theo Green) that recalls the artist’s work with Paul Thomas Anderson, The Gambler never quite takes off.
Directed by Rise of the Planet of the Apes helmer Rupert Wyatt, The Gambler has a solid visual shorthand and style to it that is actually one of the better aspects of the film.
Rupert Wyatt’s latest film — an unnecessary remake of Karel Reisz’s James Caan-starring The Gambler — is one more glaring example.
Pointless remakes are pretty thick on the ground nowadays, so one shouldn’t be surprised by “The Gambler,” Rupert Wyatt’s new take on Karel Reisz’s 1974 film.
Directed by Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) and written by William Monahan (The Departed, Kingdom of Heaven), The Gambler borrows its structure from James Toback’s 1974 cult classic, which starred James Caan as a man similarly consumed by his vice (for Toback, who has admitted he had a severe gambling problem, the movie was a work of cathartic self-autobiography).
Still, writer William Monaghan ("The Departed") and director Rupert Wyatt ("Rise of the Planet of the Apes") tweak and modernize the less-engaging 1974 film of the same name, undeniably justifying the effort.
Relocated from New York to Los Angeles and directed by Rupert Wyatt ("Rise of the Planet of the Apes") from a screenplay adapted by William Monahan ( "The Departed" ), the new version can be seen as aspiring to be an analogue to that earlier style, most interested in fashioning itself into an existential examination of modern manhood and its discontents.
The remake was directed by Rupert Wyatt (“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”) and reunites Wahlberg with William Monahan, screenwriter of “The Departed.”
Forty years later, in their attempt to remake the original, director Rupert Wyatt ("Rise of the Planet of the Apes") and screenwriter William Monahan ("The Departed") should have heeded that advice.
Unless you're a genius like Robert Altman, whose "California Split" (1974) is one of the great portraits of charismatically seedy nihilism, gambling (or any addiction) is a lousy bet as a movie subject because it is repetitious and boring.
Released just a month after “California Split,” Robert Altman’s more idiosyncratic take on the pleasures and perils of going all in, Reisz’s original “Gambler” marked the heavily autobiographical screenwriting debut of James Toback, who initially objected when Paramount announced plans for a remake without his knowledge.
It’s just his thing, the same way drinking was Nicolas Cage’s thing in “Leaving Las Vegas.”
There have been a few movies like that — “Leaving Las Vegas” comes to mind — but they’re hard to pull off.
“The Gambler” is as much a film about addiction as “The Lost Weekend” or “Leaving Las Vegas,” except the source of the addiction is the lure of the tables, rather than a substance.
Gambling as an addiction isn't the focus here — this isn't Leaving Las Vegas with playing cards replacing the booze bottles — which is fine since the film is content operating as a tightly wound drama about a man with self-destructive impulses.
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Rupert Wyatt, who broke through with The Escapist and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, directs Mark Wahlberg in this remake of a 1974 drama written by James Toback .
The film in which this premise unfolds intrigues by its director, or more specifically its director’s decision to tackle it: Rupert Wyatt (“The Escapist”), who previously handed 20th Century Fox a new franchise with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”
Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Escapist) certainly knows how to give a movie visual polish.
Wyatt, the accomplished helmer behind 2011’s terrific “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and the under-appreciated 2008 prison drama “The Escapist,” keeps the energy percolating at a high level throughout — mainly through a stream of arresting and unpredictable musical choices that include Chopin, Cole Porter and Bob Dylan, encompassing everything from Dinah Washington’s soulful “This Bitter Earth” to Scala & Kolacny Brothers’ haunting a cappella cover of “Creep.”
Lest we forget, Wyatt debuted small with tense prison-break drama The Escapist , and The Gambler sees him retighten his focus for a character study where set-pieces involve not an army of apes on charging horses but the turn of a card or the bounce of a silver ball.
Those walking into The Gambler expecting another chip-splashing thriller like 21 or Rounders are going to be sorely disappointed, as William Monahan’s script focuses heavily on a downward-spiralling character whose narcissism and suicidal subconscious translates into unhealthy, life-threatening habits.
(See also: Gretchen Mol in Rounders, Lauren Hutton in the original Gambler, etc.)
“The Gambler” is a card-thriller, but it’s no “Rounders.”
As I asked when watching Christopher Walken make a career out of playing Russian roulette in “The Deer Hunter”: How did this guy manage to stay alive this long?
Wahlberg isn’t an actor you’d automatically cast as a college professor, but then — in 1974 — neither was Caan, who was still best known for playing Sonny Corleone in The Godfather.
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(In fact, it goes so far in the other direction that it plays like the enforced happy ending of “The Last Laugh.”
The Gambler is a remake of a forceful 1974 drama that was scripted (with a fair degree of autobiography) by James Toback, skilfully played by James Caan and directed by Karel Reisz (The French Lieutenant’s Woman).