The Gambler Review Part 1
Monologs a go go!
dialogue – [dahy–uh-lawg, -log] noun 1. conversation between two or more persons.
This is one of those special reviews for me where I, the cinema equivalent of a six year old prescribing sugar pills to her teddy bear while playing doctor, get to tell so called professional filmmakers who have dedicated their lives to perfecting their art how to make films. The funny thing is the director, Rupert Wyatt, actually directed Rise of the Planet of the Apes (a personal favorite).
You don’t have to be a genius to ken that I found issues with the Gambler. First off the entire movie serves as a vehicle for every single character to deliver long, pithy, analogy ridden, repetitive, boring monologs when telling their life story, discussing philosophy, or answering the question would you like fries with that? Each character in turn is either rambling on or playing the sounding board for the ramblings of someone else. The 111 run time could have been about 45 minutes if the writers had ever studied their Shakespeare (“Brevity is the Soul of Wit”).
The other Moviemaking 101 lesson that these guys seem to forgotten is the idea that at least one of the characters in a film needs to be remotely likeable by the audience. The main character played by Marky Mark I wanted to see die a horrible lingering death and he and his love interest had a lot of chemistry in that I wished they had both been dropped into a vat of acid. 
The closest thing to a likable character was Jonathon Goodman but since he was only on screen for about 20 minutes (and mostly naked for 18 of those 20 minutes. Weird. I just found out he played Mr. Prenderghast in ParaNorman. This poster I pulled from the zombie t-shirts) there is no way he could have saved this film.
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The Gambler Review Part 2
Let me expound upon this esoteric concept known as a protagonist. You see in order for an audience to enjoy a movie they need to connect to a character. This is usually the main one but sometimes can be a supporting character. Generally this identifiable character is a good guy who people like, although some great films can be about a bad guy who people sympathize with or who goes through some kind of a change (known to we film professionals as a “character arc”). Once in a while it is a really bad guy but he is that special kind of bad that is actually very cool, or that we hate but like to see bad stuff happen to. Typically when we identify with this character we imagine ourselves in his or her shoes and kind of wish we could be that cool.
Without this connection we honestly don’t care about the characters and therefore don’t give a crap about the drama they are experiencing. The main character of this film, Jim Bennett, is a turd of the highest order. A spoiled little rich kid who has a talent for writing he refuses to use for some idealistic reason. He is a professor who ends up sleeping with one of his students while owing gangsters hundreds of thousands of dollars. He has three major problems: diarrhea of the mouth, a crippling gambling addiction, and is fricking stupid.
That is really why I couldn’t identify with him in the end. Like all rich 1st world people he has the solution to his problems handed to him over and over again and yet keeps on doing the stupidest thing possible (image courtesy of our many novelty t shirts). His mother gives him $260,000 to pay off his gambling debts and he blows it all in Vegas. Someone else lends him the dough and he gambles it again. You can’t put yourself in the shoes of a character you don’t respect and I don’t respect characters who keep sticking their fingers in light sockets while being rich little bastards.
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The Gambler Part 3
That actually could have been a decent plot point if they had played up the gambling addiction and his struggle against it (i.e. Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas) but they barely touched upon it and the main character more or less tells us (in yet another monolog) that gambling addiction doesn’t really exist (or that he doesn’t have it). Instead of describing that character arc where he hits his rock bottom and recovers from his problem he keeps on trucking and in the end solves his massive gambling problems by…gambling some more. He gains nothing, learns nothing, and ends the film in almost exactly the same position leaving the audience with nothing.
None of the rest of the characters were anything to write home about except for Mr. Goodman. 
The black and Asian gangsters were paper dolls cut from the Big Book of Stereotypes (image from the funny t shirt category), the blond girlfriend was a two dimensional nobody who seemed to lack the motivation to keep on breathing much less be interested in her professor, and the mother was another Real Housewife stereotype with angst. The funny thing is each one had the bare bones of a back story that could have been honed into a decent sub plot but were only touched upon in one or two scene and then left to rot after distracting you away from the main boring story.
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The Gambler Part 4
The plot is a rich douchbag with a gambling problem (Mark Wahlberg) owes a ton of money to a Korean gangster. He borrows more money from a loan shark (Michael Kenneth Williams. 
He was in the Road and Robocop. Image courtesy of the movie t shirt collection) in order to lose even more. A waitress at the casino is actually the guys student (Brie Larson) in his literature class and according to Professor Bennett a genius of writing. Most of Bennetts classes are him bitching to his students about what untalented losers they all are and how writing at less then a genius level is a waste of time. Everyone within a 300 mile radius tries to bail Bennett out by giving or lending him money but he keeps on gambling it away. He gets another one of his students (Anthony Kelly) to throw a basketball game to pay off his loan shark and make a ton of money. In the end he still owes a ton to the Korean gangster (Alvin Ing) and Johnathon Goodman and bets it all on black on a roulette table like an ass.
1.5 of 5 Bleh
So what did you think Dave? Honestly pass. If you are a huge Marky Mark fan you might enjoy seeing him in sunglasses but otherwise this is not a lot to hook you in. Rated R for language, some bizarre artistic drowning flashbacks a la Terrance Malick, and the tension of watching a character you hate throw his life away one card at a time. It is a character movie without any character. Maybe wait for NetFlix and see it on a Sunday morning while hung over. 1.5 of 5 phasers.
the Infamous Dave Inman
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