Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
D.J Caruso
Cast :
Al Pacino……….Walter Abrams
Matthew McConaughey……….Brandon Lang
Rene Russo……….Toni Morrow
Armand Assante……….Novian
Jeremy Piven……….Jerry
There’s a direct correlation to the rise of professional sports from a million dollar industry to a multi-billion industry and the proliferation of sports gambling. No sport has seen its fortunes increase as much than the National Football League has in the past 20 years nor does any league indulge gamblers as openly as the NFL does. With the creation of injury lists and various levels of probability it can be argued that the NFL panders towards the sports gaming establishment more than any sport outside of horse racing.
And with the boom in popularity for the NFL has come an equal boom with sports gambling advice. For every game there are 100 different opinions on who will win, how many points will be scored and what the margin of victory will be.
And into this world is Brandon Lang (Matthew McConaughey), a former all-star college quarterback who has an uncanny ability to predict games. This draws the attention of Walter Abrams (Al Pacino), head of a sport consulting agency based in New York. He wants Brandon as his new cover boy, the new face of the empire, and does so with the tacit seal of approval from his wife Toni (Rene Russo). Drawing the ire of proven winner and loyal employee Jerry (Jeremy Piven), who uses his computer system to win at a better rate than Lang; Abrams rides Lang to an unprecedented winning streak. And when the streak ends and Lang crashes into a world where high powered gamblers (like Armand Assante’s Novian) and high-powered lifestyles collide.
While Two For The Money is a good morality fable for out times involving football and gambling, that’s not what the primary strength of the movie. It’s Al Pacino, pure and simple. Pacino is generally two types of actors. The first kind is where he speaks little and commands the screen not by what he does, but by what he doesn’t do. It got him noticed as a great actor; Michael Corleone is the character he’s remembered for. But the kind of character that won him an Academy Award was a scenery-chomping, abrasive, loud character that demanded attention from everything else. And that’s what kind of character Walter Abrams is. He’s loud and over the top, but you can’t help but notice him and keep your eyes concentrated on him. With a heart condition, an addiction to gambling (Walter goes to meetings for everything that has anonymous after it, Toni confesses early on) and a self-destructive cycle, Walter is the sort of character that only Pacino could make so vile and yet so lovable. In a movie that demands a sensational performance, Pacino shows again why he’s on the short list of men considered the best actor of his generation.
That’s not to say that McConaughey and Russo aren’t admirable in their roles. Both are solid and add a lot to the story, but Pacino just seems to revel in his part and rips scenes away from his co-stars. It’s a spell-binding performance from the Scarface star, as even his co-stars seem to be in amazement.
That’s not to say that Pacino single-handedly turns a good movie into great. Two For The Money has a lot of head-scratching moments and holes in it large enough to drive a truck through. At the heart of the matter is a story of a man finding out just how far he has to sell himself for material goods, as Brandon has a lot of soul-searching and growing up to do between the time he enters New York and the film’s anti-climactic finale. It’s a well-told story that doesn’t mince words; there is no glamour to what these men do. It’s the big elephant in the room that no one pretends to notice but is there, wrecking the carpet.
