OWNING MAHOWNY A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2003 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
Gambling is hot again! First the Borgata, Atlantic City's newest hotel and casino, and now Philip Seymour Hoffman's latest addiction (also centered in Atlantic City as it so happens), the gaming-obsessed "Owning Mahowny." (And no I won't mention the fact that Mandy Moore's new instructional video also happens to be called "How to Deal.") In "'Mahowny," which is based on real-life events, Hoffman plays Dan Mahowny, a successful junior associate at a major Toronto bank. While accomplished in his career, Dan unfortunately has what he prefers to call "a little financial problem," forever indebted to a pair of sleazy loan sharks he met down at the track and who come collecting the tens of thousands of dollars Dan owes them when his betting ways quickly become excessive. One thing leads to another and soon enough Dan is extending credit limits on existing--as well as withdrawing against phony--accounts in order to get his fix, all unbeknownst to his naïve co-worker girlfriend Belinda (Minnie Driver in a rather obvious blonde wig). Helplessly, Dan starts both jetting and spiraling down to AC, NJ where, under the watchful eye of sleazy casino proprietor Victor Foss (John Hurt), he loses, wins, and loses again, some several million dollars by the time the authorities finally catch up with him. As directed by Richard Kwietniowski ("Love and Death on Long Island"), "Owning Mahowny" is a fascinating slice of a corrupted layman's life made all the more compelling by Hoffman's controlled performance at its core. As he was in "Love Liza" (where huffing gasoline fumes was the order of the day), Hoffman is impressive as a man with a singular focus in life... although I don't really need to see him in any more shower scenes thank you very much. The film, while offering little redemption for its title character, enjoys the causative effects of corruptness, allowing us the opportunity to witness the ease at which an addicted mind can lose complete control.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
Got beef? Visit "La Movie Boeuf" online at http://members.dca.net/dnb
========== X-RAMR-ID: 35427 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1183972 X-RT-TitleID: 1122175 X-RT-SourceID: 878 X-RT-AuthorID: 1393 X-RT-RatingText: 3/4
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