Owning Mahowny
Versatile actor Philip Seymour Hoffman is Dan Mahowny, a run-of-the-mill newly promoted loan officer at the bank. His demeanor screams of mediocrity: quiet, hard-working, personable, the works. Nothing you could really hate about him. Secretly, he doesn't have a gambling problem. What at first was some fun at the track turned into "financial problems" and the only way he knew to get out of it was to gamble with high stakes on the line at a casino in Atlantic City run by John Hurt. When this man gambles, his focus is like a laser beam until time runs out or his chips run out. But all he needs is a little time to get more chips for his position at the bank allowed him to sneak off with millions of dollars through a series of tacking on a few dollars here and even making up a character, totalling 10 million by the end of his spree. All this without the hint of suspicion from the bank or his girlfriend, an oddly placed Minnie Driver with a weird big blonde hairdo. The bookie who consistently bothers him for the money he's owed comments that Mahowny wins just so that he can gamble and eventually lose again. He takes losing to a whole new level.

It's really an interesting character study on fighting an addiction without actually trying. It's based on true events from 1980-1982. Any man who runs up the amount of luck Mahowny gets would be jumping for joy and basking in the glory of the money he will earn. But Mahowny plays it differently as if it was meant to happen. And Hoffman just shows off how good of an actor he is by being simply the dullest man to win millions after spending millions. But in a movie about payoffs, the movie itself lacks one. The movie just keeps on going scene after scene with the mantra of the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Characters rotate in and out really without warning, especially the police, seemingly a bumbling outfit, looking out for the next major drug deal. (Hey, they're Canadian after all.) Driver isn't much of a factor in a movie that is driven by Hoffman alone, the way his character might have wanted it to. 2.5 stars