“Even Money” is pretty much just that: not too dull but not terribly interesting.
It’s an ensemble piece about gambling that aspires to both film noir suspensefulness and instructive insight into a life-destroying addiction.
The players are passionate enough, but they can’t overcome a sense of dramatic deja vu – made extra irksome by the fact that another underwhelming gambling movie, “Lucky You,” came and went in May.
There are some compelling moments in this one, but the odds are against it leaving any strong impressions.
Kim Basinger, Tim Roth and Jay Mohr are the standout performers as, respectively, a blocked novelist who has lost her family’s savings at the slots, a sadistic point man for a crime boss who may or may not exist, and a middle-class bookie who hates using violence to collect because it makes his acid reflux flare up.
Less enchanting roles include Danny DeVito’s washed-up but still hustling casino magician; an uncharacteristically overacting Forest Whitaker as an indebted handyman who tries to get his beloved NBA-prospect brother (Nick Cannon) to throw games; and Kelsey Grammer, whose strangely written, hard-boiled police detective on crutches starts out narrating the story, then disappears from it altogether until the end.
There are murders, and whole lives hang on the turn of a card or a college game point spread. Logic is no more a strong suit in first- time screenwriter Robert Tannen’s script than originality is; it takes the writer’s professor husband (Ray Liotta), for example, two-thirds of the movie to discover that she’s drained their bank account.
But bizarre logic is also the gambling addict’s lifeblood, and director Mark Rydell (“On Golden Pond”) is often good at evoking the desperation and superstitious hope that’s a big part of the gaming spirit. This is nothing new, either, but it’s enough to keep the movie intriguing enough to watch, if not a Big Spin nail-biter.
Filmed in Southern California, “Even Money” seems to take place in a mid-size Eastern city that goes unnamed. Seems about right for a movie about lives that are more or less headed nowhere.
“Even Money”
R for violence, language|1 hour, 48 minutes|DRAMA|Directed by Mark Rydell; starring Kim Basinger, Nick Cannon, Danny DeVito, Kelsey Gramer, Tim Roth, Forest Whitaker|Opens today at the Regal Colorado Center.
