By Richard Winters
My Rating: 3 out of 10
4-Word Review: Gambling can hurt you.
‘One does not find one’s destiny one’s destiny will find them’. This seems to be the moral of this multi-faceted character study that has all the right ingredients, but is incredibly flat.
The story involves Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) a man trying to forge a normal life with a good job as an attorney and a relationship with a pretty woman. Yet he can’t beat his urge to gamble. When his friend Lester ‘Worm’ Murphy (Edward Norton) gets released from jail he finds himself led back into his old habits and his life soon falls apart.
The film wants to take an honest look at the lifestyle of a gambler without taking any shortcuts. In most ways it does an honorable job. It takes a more technical approach to poker playing and therefore makes it more enlightening. The situations seem a bit overly-dramatized, but overall are quite believable. It definitely has insights and is well crafted.
The problem is that it never comes together. Nothing is compelling and the momentum is lacking to the point that it starts to drag. Certain ‘strong’ scenes that are meant for impact end up having no effect at all. In the end it comes off as being too obvious and having too much of a textbook type approach.
Damon has proven himself to be a solid actor, but his character here is bland and colorless. Norton, as his troubled friend, is a little more interesting, but he is trapped in a stale setting. Both men look way too boyish to be playing the parts of seasoned, hardened, ‘been there, done that’ type characters.
John Malkovich is on hand to give an offbeat performance as a Russian born card player complete with a thick Russian accent. At first this is fun, but he ends up overdoing it and eventually makes it too campy. John Turturro gives an amazingly restrained performance, which could be of interest too his followers.
The one scene that really caps this off as being a bad movie for me is when Norton and Damon are caught cheating while playing amongst a large group of off-duty policemen. The police all gang up on them and pummel them in a way that should produce severe life threatening injuries. Instead they are thrown out of the building with not even a strand of their hair being out of place. They have a few streaks of red on their faces that is supposed to be blood, but it looks like paint put on by a paintbrush. Damon goes through the rest of the film with a slightly darkened eye and two scratches around his nose. Everyone comments that he looks like he “got it bad” when I’ve seen third graders with worse looking injuries after a playground fight.
My Rating: 3 out of 10
Released: September 11, 1998
Runtime: 2Hours 1Minute
Rated R
Director: John Dahl
Studio: Miramax
Available: DVD, Blu-ray
Scopophilia 
I quite enjoyed this movie and watched it twice and Malkovich his character never got boring to me. I can understand your points though.
Normally I really like Malkovich, but here I felt the director gave him too much leeway.
I think Edward Norton masters playing troubled characters……and this was no exception…..though I do like his work in Fight Club or Primal Fear better! True he looks very boyish for the part……
I consider Norton to be an excellen actor. He’s played a variety of roles and done them all well. He was very good here too, but the movie just didn’t click.
True the movie could have done a lot more in terms of exploiting the talent and making the story line taut!
I like this film and have it in my collection but would agree that it’s a miss more than a hit. The impression I’ve always got is that they slapped it together pretty quick without much actor’s rehearsals and not much deep artistic effort from anyone above the line, except to make a Hollywood movie. Also Damon and Norton not very good together, no major chemistry.