Along with journalism and medicine, academia has long proved one of the most ill-represented professions on screen. I struggle, however, to remember a less convincing professor of literature and creative writing than Mark Wahlberg in The Gambler, a remake of Karel Reisz’s 1974 cult hit which starred James Caan.
Wahlberg is Jim Bennett, a rich kid and once-successful author who divides his time between theatrically (and improbably) hectoring his students on the nature of genius and blowing his family’s money on self-destructive gambling binges. Given seven days to pay off ever-expanding debts, Bennett turns to his long-suffering mother (a convincingly embittered Jessica Lange) to bail him out, then promptly digs himself an even deeper hole. Loan shark Frank (a sweaty John Goodman) tells Bennett that he’s suicidal, but in fact he’s just searching for that one elusive moment of greatness that will give meaning to his life.
Despite stylish direction by Rupert Wyatt, who pulls off a few arresting set pieces, The Gambler never manages to make sense of William Monahan’s often laughably overripe screenplay. While original writer James Toback grounded his 70s script in autobiography (he was both teacher and gambler), Monahan exhibits an uncharacteristic tin ear for the film’s wordy milieu, leaving the cast (including a sorely served Brie Larson) to wrestle with toe-curling am-dram speeches about the nature of life, love and learning. Toback dubbed the remake “disrespectful”, but this latest incarnation (originally developed for Scorsese and DiCaprio) merely magnifies the stature of his own imperfect work.
