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SYNOPSIS:
After cruel injury rules out the prospect of a glittering
career, Brandon Lang uses his unparalleled knowledge of the
professional football game to get back to the top by plying
his skills in the hugely lucrative sports betting industry.
Lang's talent is spotted early and he's soon drafted in as
successor to Walter Abrams' extravagant sports network. The
support and affections of wife Toni Morrow can't protect Abrams
against a detrimental lifestyle even though fortunes are won
by his understudy. But whilst betting other people's money
means big rewards, there are also big risks. Brandon's unwavering
need to win takes him trailblazing into the gambling underworld
where only the trust and teamwork of those closest can bring
him back to normality.
MOVIE
REVIEW
Everyone loves a gamble, a knock on the door of Lady
Luck, a prediction that goes the right way - yours. Sports
is an area where bets are put, a guess or analysis on the
better sports person / team. It's no wonder that if you make
a casual flip of the local New Paper, the sports pages are
full of predictions done by reporters, punters, and the so-called
experts. Of late, there are the 1900 numbers to call, charging
dollars per minute for that sure-fire tip.
And
that, is the premise Two for the Money is based upon. The
sports betting industry in the US, and a look behind those
900 numbers. Matthew McConaughey plays an ex-football player
Brandon Lang, who suffered what every sportsman fear, a career
ending injury. So begins a fairly lucrative start up career
as a sports adviser dispensing tips in a small time gambling
house, recording his betting advice on the cheap. He's good
because he was in the game before, therefore possessing intimate
knowledge of the players, teams and tactics.
When
you're good, you'll be headhunted, and he gets an opportunity
to join the big boys in the industry when he's invited for
trials in sports television mogul Walter Abrams (Al Pacino),
and before you know it, Abrams begins to groom Lang into his
potential successor, creating an entirely new fictional persona
in which Lang operates in - arrogant, and smooth talking,
and slowly but surely, Lang has to eat, breathe and live this
character as he goes from lending his voice, to showing his
face and talent on network television. It's always an adrenaline
rush knowing you're red hot in your crystal ball gazing skills,
earning handsome commissions from the bets that the big rollers
place.
Watching
how things work behind the scenes is the high point in the
movie. The phone calls, the pushy tactics, the convincing
persuasion to bet big and thus win big (or lose big), the
building of reputation, the marketing techniques, the forging
of relationships with clients, office rivalry, the list just
goes on. And observing how the selling go about, just makes
you think twice about the pitch those advertisements make.
The
movie's not without flaws, and the weaker moments are the
cliched relationships featured amongst its main characters
Lang, Abrams and his wife Toni Morrow (Rene Russo). We see
the usual mentor-protege role between Lang and Abrams moulded
from Wall Street's Gekko-Fox, or even another Pacino movie
The Devil's Advocate. Here, their relationship stems from
Lang's unwitting search for a surrogate father, which he finds
in Abrams. despite Abrams' egomaniac mood swings and belief
in capitalizing on other's greed to push their revenues sky
high. Well, that's the way most private corporations are run
anyway.
The
weirdest part would be Abrams' seemingly candid nonchalance
about his wife Toni's relationship with Lang. Suffice to say
that it'll all require a bit getting used to, and contributes
to a major closure towards the end. Perhaps the dynamics between
Abrams and Morrow is interesting to study, with each being
quite open about revealing their disgraceful past to strangers,
wearing it on their sleeves as they take quite moping sessions
and fight their addictions to respective vices.
In
typical Hollywood fashion, this supposedly dark tale of negative
human emotions ended in the usual way without much fanfare.
We witness the telling of the moral of the story quite explicitly,
that it doesn't pay to gamble - Lady Luck is extremely fickle,
you can win big today, but you can lose it all tomorrow. It's
small wonder that most "experts" dispense, but don't
accept bets on their own advice.
MOVIE
RATING:
Review
by Stefan Shih
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