Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com "We Put the SIN in Cinema"
© Copyright 2003 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.
Local connections abound in Owning Mahowny, the new Philip Seymour Hoffman vehicle written by Rochester's Maurice Chauvet. Based on Gary Stephen Ross's book Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony, the picture tells the true story of a Toronto banker who stole millions of dollars to support a gambling habit in the early '80s. It's kind of a Canadian twist on our own Frank Abagnale, Jr. story (the real Molony, who pulled all of this off when he was just 24, now earns big consulting bucks to stop bank fraud).
Hoffman (Love Liza) does the Hoffman thing like only Hoffman can, hiding behind big glasses, a moustache and a Canadian accent as Dan Mahowny, the youngest assistant manager in the history of one of Toronto's largest banks. He's been put in charge of one of the bank's biggest corporate clients, and his older bosses only have glowing things to say about Dan's keen business mind.
In one scene, those same bank managers gush about Dan's impeccable track record and lending judgment, only to have Dan enter his office in the next scene and find it occupied by two loan sharks looking for $10,300 to cover bad gambling debt. To do so, Dan takes out a bogus business loan, and that's just the beginning of his intricate web of fraud. Eventually, he's swiping millions of dollars and popping down to Atlantic City, where he loses the money so quickly at the gaming tables, he becomes the obsession of casino manager Victor Foss (John Hurt, Harry Potter).
Director Richard Kwietniowski's last feature - 1997's Love and Death on Long Island - starred Hurt and was about a different kind of obsession. In that film Hurt played an old fuddy-duddy who accidentally stumbled into the wrong theatre of a multiplex and ended up with an unusual crush on a teen heartthrob (Jason Priestley). Obsession is definitely the theme in Mahowny, whether its Dan's insane bets (like taking all of the American League away teams, or every "one" horse) or the lengths Victor will go to in order to keep his unlucky whale happy and away from other casinos.
There's a little more going on in Mahowny, like Dan's relationship with his enabling girlfriend (Minnie Driver, who sports what might be the worst wig in the history of modern cinema), but most of it is just a distraction from the always brilliant Hoffman's interesting character study. The trouble is, it's a character study in which we learn very little about the character in question. We don't really feel the rush Dan gets from gambling, but the subtle comparison between the ruthlessness of casino managers and corporate bankers is certainly tasty.
1:44 - R for language and some sexuality
========== X-RAMR-ID: 35278 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1174458 X-RT-TitleID: 1122175 X-RT-SourceID: 595 X-RT-AuthorID: 1146 X-RT-RatingText: 6/10
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews