Starring: Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey, Rene Russo, Armand Assante and Jaime King
Director: D.J. Caruso
Rated: M
SCRIPTURE is often quoted as saying that “money is the root of all evil”.
That is not quite exact. The actual quotation is that “the love of money is the root of all evil”.
That is certainly the text for Two for the Money. It is a film about gambling and about gambling addiction. This reviewer had to react carefully as gambling is not one of his favourite pastimes.
This is a moral film. By the end it is a moralising film.
It takes us on a journey of self-discovery by Brandon Lang (Matthew McConaughey), a boy who wanted to please his father with his sports talent, who went on to be a champion college footballer (but whose alcoholic father walked out on the family) and who, in one of his greatest scores, suffered a leg injury that stopped him from playing again.
Six years later he is working as a sales phone operator.
On the other end of the phone comes Walter Abrams with an offer too good to refuse. Walter is played by Al Pacino, not quite so over the top as in recent years, but a strong performance that mesmerises both Brandon and the audience.
Pacino has already had the opportunity to play Satan in the modern business world in The Devil’s Advocate. While this is something of a re-run, it is a creative variation on the theme.
Walter runs a legal, though shady and morally dubious, betting company that gives comprehensive tips for wins but does not handle bets. What it does handle is a percentage on winnings that result from advice given.
Obviously it is worth millions (well, not “worth” millions but that is the kind of income the company makes).
Walter is also a gambling addict who has been “clean” for 18 years. However, his business risk taking is just another form of addiction.
He also confesses that he gets a thrill from the experience of losing – and he finally risks the loss both of his friendship and partnership with Brandon as well as of his wife and daughter.
The film is obviously about Walter’s moral journey, but this is a highways and byways (and dead ends) kind of journey, much less obvious than Brandon’s succumbing to Walter’s wiles and the get-rich-quick philosophy of life.
Brandon can succeed because he is a whiz at tipping football game winners.
Another quotation, this time from the poet W.B. Yeats, reminds us that in a time of crisis, “the centre cannot hold”.
Walter so pressurises Brandon that he has no life left for himself.
Brandon also discovers that Walter is more manipulative of people’s lives than he had ever suspected.
And when he starts to pressure customers into higher risk betting, his conscience starts to get to him. This is reinforced when he starts to unravel in his tips and is bashed by a Puerto Rican billionaire (Armand Assante) who relies on his advice and loses.
What will Brandon do? What are the real choices in a hedonistic, materialistic world? To go with the flow or to take a moral stance?
The film capitalises on the contrast between the hyperactive Pacino and the extremely laidback McConaughey who tends to rely on his kind of aw-shucks charm and his image as what PR calls ” a hunk”. (He is fit and does spend a lot of movie time doing push-ups). Rene Russo (whose husband, Dan Gilroy, wrote the screenplay) appears as Pacino’s wife, a former drug addict for whom every day is a challenge to keep going and not fall back.
In the background are the phone sales staff with their intense patter and pressuring of customers, their victims whom they con and who allow their addictions to con them.
