The movie, The Gambler... is awful.

Essentially his grandpa is super rich and dying and on his death bed tells him that he's leaving Mark's character with nothing to build his character. Now this is speculation, because it's not explained, but then Mark's character apparently gets depressed and decides he's going to just go try to lose an amount of money that will get him killed. He gets in deep to 3 different gangsters and has a zero f*cks given attitude the ENTIRE movie.

He has NUMEROUS opportunities with money IN HAND to pay off the people he owes, but instead just blows it all pressing non stop. At one point he bets $500 on a blackjack hand, gets an 18, doubles, and of course pulls the 3. The next hand he bets $10k and loses. Basically, if he wins, he just bets more and more so that when he loses he loses it all. He does this 2 or 3 times, each time the movie could have ended as he could have just paid his debts and been free. Every time he gets money, as a viewer, you have this sinking feeling of "oh come on man... just go pay the damn guys their money."

Then suddenly he 'mildly' cares (for no apparent reason) enough to get the 3rd loan shark to loan him a ton of money. He then helps one of the gansters fix a game of college basketball in which apparently he takes this large sum he just got from the 3rd loan shark and bet it as well. So you think he's free, or you think he had a ton of other money he also stuffed on the game that he's been hiding (as this was his opportunity of a lifetime to make millions)... but no. Even with his winnings he pays off the smallest gangster, but doesn't have enough to pay the other 2 off completely (and one of them threatened to end his family bloodline if he didn't pay). So what does he do now? He bets it all on BLACK on roulette (to have enough to pay off everyone he owes). Black lands and he says he's not a gambler, then leaves. The problem I have again is multiple times during the movie he says he's not a gambler... but yet he never has any side agenda, no AP play, no extra knowledge, no hidden super smart plan that we didn't see coming as a viewer that makes us actually like, or respect, him. He's just literally betting tons of money with no set strategy, etc (although in the blackjack you do see he at least plays basic strategy, never mind him just stacking his winnings every hand until he loses it all every time).

Pissed his grandpa wouldn't give him money he devises a plan to make millions on his own... He hates/resents his mom for not sharing the money she was given with him (apparently she's a super millionaire), so he wants to hurt her along the lines as well. Well, his plan is to sort of "Don Johnson" them. Play the role of a sucker, bet tons and tons and intentionally keep losing until he can get a very positive situation and steam role them for millions. At one point in the movie he says "I've been up 2 and a half million before..." and it's implied he lost it all back but never said. Let's pretend he did stuff this money away and the whole movie he's pretending he's broke. Then, when the gangsters start calling his mom for money she freaks and gives him $260,000 to pay it off. His lack of caring emotionally breaks her and ultimately ends their relationship (which is what he wants since he hates her). So he breaks her, gets a chunk of money from her, then dumps it so he can still appear broke and find this "AP" situation. Then when he finds it (fixing the college basketball game) he uses the last loan sharks money to "win" enough to pay everyone off, but in the mean time he takes his millions he stashed away and bets it as well, making life changing money in the process and proving to himself that he IS in fact talented/smart enough to make it on his own, oddly accomplishing what his grandpa wanted him to in the first place.

The gambling scenes in the illegal venues in New York (I assume NY, this was clearer in the 1974 flick) were OK, but not better. Blackjack was dominant in all casino scenes. I noted a the felt said a natural paid 2:1 in New York; I couldn’t make out much on the felt in Vegas. At least everything was shown correctly. The double-down on 18 [to catch a 3] made no sense in this movie; in the ’74 flick such moves had a connection with the guy’s philosophy. In the current movie it was just more insanity from a guy on total tilt at all times.

The guy never wins till the end. Absolutely loses everything with a system guaranteed to lose it all. He is presented as the ultimate in wanting to lose suicidally; that loan sharks want to kill him for borrowing money and not paying back? this suits him fine. Then to show that the film makers have no knowledge whatsoever about what they are making a movie about, they end it by having him get out of his impossible situation by crazily betting it all. That’s a good lesson to teach, eh? Then we are supposed to believe he is cured of his problem forevermore. 99% of the general public out there, including the ones who never read a word written about the nature of problem gamblers, knows better than that. You must have had entire audiences stunned at the stupidity at every showing. It's exactly the opposite of what would happen.

More comments:

*There was indeed entirely too much John Goodman flesh shown for any reasonable human being to have to take

*The Goodman soliloquy is pretty good and has made the rounds I think.

*It’s pretty much the same screenplay for both films, albeit with changes [especially the ending]. In 1974 the guy loses the girl midway, in 2014 the guy gets the girl. He is redeemed by the love of a woman, never to gamble again. Who would have thought the corniest crap would be in 2014?

*There is a distinction between the people lending money here that occurs to me. If the person lending the money is essentially the house [illegal variety], and that guy lends it to a total loser, then he and the mob are just lending it to somebody who then loses it back to him. The guy gets more and more into debt to the mob and they just wind up owning him. They squeeze him for everything he’s got and probably force him into illegally obtaining money, and they take that too. I saw this for myself when I lived in Youngstown Ohio. In the end a guy I knew like that was killed. They took him for everything and then killed him as an example of ‘what happens when you don’t pay’. This answers the question of “why would you keep loaning money to a loser?” It can have its own perverse, tragic, evil logic. [edits]The other loan sharks are seen taking on huge risk. In particular I don’t think it was realistic for the Goodman character to loan that money. His options to collect are actually vague. The 1974 film did a better job of keeping it real, when the amount needed reached the impossible level, that’s when the point-shaving came in.

*Which brings me to the Af/Am portrayal in both films. The original screenplay was auto-biographical to some degree, and apparently the writer felt pretty dragged through the dirt with his experience with Blacks associated with gambling. The 1974 movie was starkly unsympathetic to any aspect of the Af/Am community, and that goes for students, kids on the street, people in bars, you name it. A remarkable thing, really, as the Enlightenment had begun by then, you know. I sure thought the 2014 movie would make an effort to change that. Maybe the white tennis player would be the point shaver? Nope! It was the Brother again. Instead the white guy went through some harrowing thing to get a big bag of money [winnings I guess from point shaving, seemed unclear] but wanted no more to do with it, wouldn’t even take any money for his time.

*In both movies, I felt it should have been made clear that introducing the basketball point-shaving scheme to the student who was doing it was going to be an absolute disaster for the athlete in the long run. If he is really good, the NBA career is doomed. Nobody gets away with this I'm thinking.

*And how can you have a bad knee and nobody knows about it?

*The main character's mother says he is not a narcissist and I think the movie wants to explain him as someone not a narcissist. Doesn’t work. The guy is a total narcissist.