For a Professor, the Thrill of Teaching Isn’t Enough
‘The Gambler’ Stars Mark Wahlberg Indulging in a Habit
By MANOHLA DARGIS<time class="dateline" datetime="2014-12-24">DEC. 24, 2014</time>
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In “The Gambler,” a movie about a guy who’s a glutton for criminally high stakes and for punishment, a skeletonized Mark Wahlberg wears a mop of greasy hair and an abject look. In some scenes, he looks crushed and lost, like a wadded scrap of paper that fell short of the garbage bin. It soon becomes clear why. His character, Jim Bennett, hit the literary jackpot years ago with a well-received first and only published novel. Now Jim splits his time between teaching college — say hello to Professor Wahlberg — and betting and losing at gaming tables, some in underworld parlors around a Los Angeles that’s been Michael Mann-ed into a smear of throbbing color and would-be existential dread.
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</aside> “The Gambler” is based on the terrific lowdown and gritty 1974 movie of the same title starring James Caan. That film was beautifully directed by Karel Reisz from James Toback’s script about his experience as a gambler and college lecturer; the new one was directed by Rupert Wyatt from a screenplay by William Monahan, who also wrote Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award windfall “The Departed.” Without a script in hand, it’s tough to tell how significant a contribution a writer makes to a movie, what was retained or changed from page to screen. All that’s clear in this “Gambler” is that almost everything that makes the original so pleasurably idiosyncratic, from its daft ideas to the peekaboo bear rug spread over Mr. Caan’s often-bared chest, has been expunged from the remake.
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<figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description"> In “The Gambler,” Mark Wahlberg can’t shake his habit. Credit Claire Folger/Paramount Pictures </figcaption> </figure> A change in name is the least of it but is symptomatic of the material’s bowdlerization. Mr. Caan’s gambler is Axel Freed and the scion of a wealthy Jewish New York family. (The name suggests that Mr. Toback was familiar with Dostoyevsky’s short autobiographical novel “The Gambler,” in which the protagonist is named Alexei.) Recast as an ethnically generic poor little rich boy, Mr. Wahlberg’s Jim Bennett lives in Los Angeles, mostly after dark in illegal gambling dens where Asian and black habitués serve as decoration. In one of the remake’s better touches, Jim and some other gamblers stroll into these joints with satchels and briefcases stuffed with cash, like salarymen purposefully marching off to work. Gambling isn’t his profession, though it is his calling, habit and love.
The story mostly involves Jim’s consuming passion with gambling and, in a quasi-Freudian move, learning to transfer that libidinous energy to a dubiously healthier object, in this case one of his young students, Amy (an underused Brie Larson). Mr. Monahan may have lifted the teacher-student liaison from Dostoyevsky’s biography and novelist’s relationship with a much younger woman. That’s moderately interesting, but it doesn’t mean anything for Amy (or Ms. Larson), who does little more than look intently at Jim when he’s jumping around the lecture hall or laying down some heavy thoughts. Ms. Larson holds your eyes and interest, but she’s as ornamental as the stick figure played by Lauren Hutton in the 1974 film.
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<figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description"> Brie Larson plays Amy, a student and a love interest. Credit Claire Folger/Paramount Pictures </figcaption> </figure> Mr. Wyatt’s direction is smooth, although he’s more confident, and the movie more convincing, when he goes for baroque with the story’s excesses, like cutting loose with the cartoonish villains played by Alvin Ing, Jessica Lange, Michael Kenneth Williams and John Goodman. The problem is that Jim (and Mr. Wahlberg) never joins the fun. A congenitally likable screen presence, Mr. Wahlberg handles the movie’s streaming words like the rapper he once was, and he sometimes cocks an eyebrow as if acknowledging the absurdity of it all. Mostly, his character is sad, sincere and heavy, and his performance is, too, even when Jim whips out some eyeglasses the first time he enters his classroom. When Marilyn Monroe pulled that kind of stunt it was comedy gold, but it just makes Jim and Mr. Wahlberg look silly.
What’s mostly missing from “The Gambler” is a sense of why Jim is so insistent on squandering his money, privilege and patrimony. In a letter to a friend, Dostoyevsky wrote that the main thing about his gambler “is that all his vitality, his strength, his impetus, his courage, have gone into roulette.” The character “is a poet in his own way, but ashamed of this poetry because he is profoundly conscious that it is unworthy, although the necessity of risk redeems him in his own eyes.” You can understand why Mr. Reisz chose Mr. Caan, who was a sexual beast on-screen back in the day and who makes you feel the intensity of the character’s need to gamble, to chance it all so that he can win, a risk that can lead to something like grace. Here, though winning isn’t everything — it’s hardly anything.
‘The Gambler’ Stars Mark Wahlberg Indulging in a Habit
By MANOHLA DARGIS<time class="dateline" datetime="2014-12-24">DEC. 24, 2014</time>
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In “The Gambler,” a movie about a guy who’s a glutton for criminally high stakes and for punishment, a skeletonized Mark Wahlberg wears a mop of greasy hair and an abject look. In some scenes, he looks crushed and lost, like a wadded scrap of paper that fell short of the garbage bin. It soon becomes clear why. His character, Jim Bennett, hit the literary jackpot years ago with a well-received first and only published novel. Now Jim splits his time between teaching college — say hello to Professor Wahlberg — and betting and losing at gaming tables, some in underworld parlors around a Los Angeles that’s been Michael Mann-ed into a smear of throbbing color and would-be existential dread.
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- <article class="story theme-summary"> The Gambler (Remake)<time class="dateline" datetime="2014-12-25">DEC. 25, 2014</time>
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</aside> “The Gambler” is based on the terrific lowdown and gritty 1974 movie of the same title starring James Caan. That film was beautifully directed by Karel Reisz from James Toback’s script about his experience as a gambler and college lecturer; the new one was directed by Rupert Wyatt from a screenplay by William Monahan, who also wrote Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award windfall “The Departed.” Without a script in hand, it’s tough to tell how significant a contribution a writer makes to a movie, what was retained or changed from page to screen. All that’s clear in this “Gambler” is that almost everything that makes the original so pleasurably idiosyncratic, from its daft ideas to the peekaboo bear rug spread over Mr. Caan’s often-bared chest, has been expunged from the remake.
<figure id="media-100000003417254" class="media photo embedded has-adjacency has-lede-adjacency layout-large-horizontal media-100000003417254 ratio-tall" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemid="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/12/25/arts/GAMBLER/GAMBLER-articleLarge.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" role="group"> Photo
<figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description"> In “The Gambler,” Mark Wahlberg can’t shake his habit. Credit Claire Folger/Paramount Pictures </figcaption> </figure> A change in name is the least of it but is symptomatic of the material’s bowdlerization. Mr. Caan’s gambler is Axel Freed and the scion of a wealthy Jewish New York family. (The name suggests that Mr. Toback was familiar with Dostoyevsky’s short autobiographical novel “The Gambler,” in which the protagonist is named Alexei.) Recast as an ethnically generic poor little rich boy, Mr. Wahlberg’s Jim Bennett lives in Los Angeles, mostly after dark in illegal gambling dens where Asian and black habitués serve as decoration. In one of the remake’s better touches, Jim and some other gamblers stroll into these joints with satchels and briefcases stuffed with cash, like salarymen purposefully marching off to work. Gambling isn’t his profession, though it is his calling, habit and love.
The story mostly involves Jim’s consuming passion with gambling and, in a quasi-Freudian move, learning to transfer that libidinous energy to a dubiously healthier object, in this case one of his young students, Amy (an underused Brie Larson). Mr. Monahan may have lifted the teacher-student liaison from Dostoyevsky’s biography and novelist’s relationship with a much younger woman. That’s moderately interesting, but it doesn’t mean anything for Amy (or Ms. Larson), who does little more than look intently at Jim when he’s jumping around the lecture hall or laying down some heavy thoughts. Ms. Larson holds your eyes and interest, but she’s as ornamental as the stick figure played by Lauren Hutton in the 1974 film.
<figure id="media-100000003417257" class="media photo embedded has-adjacency has-lede-adjacency layout-large-vertical media-100000003417257" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemid="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/12/25/arts/GAMBLER2/GAMBLER2-blog427.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" role="group"> Photo
<figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description"> Brie Larson plays Amy, a student and a love interest. Credit Claire Folger/Paramount Pictures </figcaption> </figure> Mr. Wyatt’s direction is smooth, although he’s more confident, and the movie more convincing, when he goes for baroque with the story’s excesses, like cutting loose with the cartoonish villains played by Alvin Ing, Jessica Lange, Michael Kenneth Williams and John Goodman. The problem is that Jim (and Mr. Wahlberg) never joins the fun. A congenitally likable screen presence, Mr. Wahlberg handles the movie’s streaming words like the rapper he once was, and he sometimes cocks an eyebrow as if acknowledging the absurdity of it all. Mostly, his character is sad, sincere and heavy, and his performance is, too, even when Jim whips out some eyeglasses the first time he enters his classroom. When Marilyn Monroe pulled that kind of stunt it was comedy gold, but it just makes Jim and Mr. Wahlberg look silly.
What’s mostly missing from “The Gambler” is a sense of why Jim is so insistent on squandering his money, privilege and patrimony. In a letter to a friend, Dostoyevsky wrote that the main thing about his gambler “is that all his vitality, his strength, his impetus, his courage, have gone into roulette.” The character “is a poet in his own way, but ashamed of this poetry because he is profoundly conscious that it is unworthy, although the necessity of risk redeems him in his own eyes.” You can understand why Mr. Reisz chose Mr. Caan, who was a sexual beast on-screen back in the day and who makes you feel the intensity of the character’s need to gamble, to chance it all so that he can win, a risk that can lead to something like grace. Here, though winning isn’t everything — it’s hardly anything.
