By Richard Winters
My Rating: 3 out of 10
4-Word Review: Sportswriter addicted to gambling.
To commemorate the sad passing of Ryan O’Neal just last week we here at Scopophilia decided to review one of his more infamous outings in a film that helped to ultimately bring in his career downfall, which was already fading at the time anyways, but this one was the nail in the coffin. He plays Steve Taggart a popular sports journalist who wishes to do an expose on the gambling epidemic. His editor (John Saxon) gives the okay and so he proceeds to write articles dealing with a ‘Mr. Green’ whose addiction is ruining his life and career. Unbeknownst to his editors Mr. Green is actually Steve whose gambling habit is so out of control that he owes $31,000 to a bookmaker named The Dutchman (Chad Everett) who has a henchman named The Hat (William Smith) that follows Steve around and threatens him with violence if he doesn’t pay up. Steve’s recourse is to simply gamble more hoping somehow to get on a lucky streak and be able to pay it all back when instead he just continues to drown in an even more widening debt.
Writer/director Richard Brooks became fascinated with the topic of gambling while recovering from a heart attack and spent years writing the script, where he intended to have Sam Shephard play the lead. Unfortunately despite his great success with other films this one ended up becoming a giant flop that cost the studio over $7 million to produce, but only recouped a paltry $244,000 at the box office. Derided by both critics and viewers its become a ‘so bad it’s good’ type movie that in the ‘Official Razzie Movie Guide’ gets listed as the 100 Most Enjoyable Bad Movies Ever Made.
The movie would’ve been better had they got Shephard in the lead role as intended instead of the wooden O’Neal who doesn’t show enough emotion, or nuance to make his part interesting. The character would’ve had a better arch had we known him before he got into gambling and could see his downfall right from the beginning versus coming into it when he’s already starting to hit rock bottom. Having the viewer fooled into thinking Mr. Green was a real person might’ve made an interesting twist versus giving it all a way at the start that it’s Steve.
The dialogue is badly overwritten with the character’s regurgitating out gambling statistics like they’re a computer and there’s no conversational quality in anything that gets said. Despite being supposedly this ‘hard-hitting’ look at what goes on in Las Vegas it instead comes-off more surreal as it shows only people who are ‘captivated by the madness of gambling’ like these are the only type of people who exist without countering it with others who are not into it and thus giving it a better balance and perspective.
The story also suffers from too many coincidences and extreme dramatic arcs. The most notable is when Steve finds a soldier (Patrick Cassidy) inside a bathroom stall ready to shoot himself with a gun as he’s so depressed about losing all his money, but Steve stops him from doing it. Then gives the soldier money for airfare and a little bit extra for spending cash. The soldier uses it to continue his gambling where he wins it all back at the craps table making it seem like a ‘happy’ ending and going against the film’s own narrative that wants to show the ‘evils’ of the addiction only to laugh it all away when somebody gets on a magical win streak that somehow makes it all better. Going from potential suicide victim to happiest guy on earth in the matter of only a couple of hours is a bit of a stretch.
Having Steve get physically attacked by The Hat inside a gambling lounge as he has both his shins kicked-in and then miraculously having Flo (Catherin Hicks), a cocktail waitress whom he had a fling with, walk by at the exact same instant when The Hat leaves, so she’s able to help back to her room seemed way to coincidental and convenient. The fact that he doesn’t go to a doctor and able to still walk using only some pain pills to get by was even more absurd. What gets even dumber though is that during the melee Steve injures The Hat, using non other than salt and pepper shakers, causing him to wear a over-the-top neck brace as he goes around town trying to ‘even the score’ with Steve by attempting to kill him, but unable to do so at every turn like he’s morphed into the live action version of Wiley E. Coyote.
Spoiler Alert!
The biggest laugh, or most nauseating moment depending on your perspective, comes at the end when Steve is supposedly ‘cured’ of his addiction by having attended a Gambling Anonymous meeting only to, at the airport waiting to go home, decide to put one last quarter into a slot machine called ‘Bet a Buck for God’ in which he amazingly wins a massive payout and having his winnings immediately handed to him by a woman dressed like a nun. I thought for sure this was some sort of dream, but to my shock it’s not and we’re all supposed to take it seriously.
It then gets even worse as Steve goes on one last hot streak and able to win back all the money he’s owed and thus get out of his predicament, which does a complete injustice to the subject. Many other victims of gambling aren’t able to do this as the movie even says itself the odds are the house will ultimately win making the wrap-up completely false and thus the film’s notorious cornball status is highly deserved.
My Rating: 3 out of 10
Released: November 22, 1985
Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Richard Brooks
Studio: MGM/UA
Available: VHS, DVD-R (dvdlady.com)
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