Great gambling movies

Just caught this on the tube today. Owning Mahowny, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Minnie Driver. It tells the true story of a Canadian banker, Brian Molony, who embezzles 10.2 million dollars to fuel his gambling addiction in Atlantic City.

New Jersey Gaming fined Caesar's a day's closure (day after Thanksgiving) for their part (not checking the source of his gambling funds).

Although lacking the glitz and glamour of a movie like "21", the story is fairly true and shows the degeneration of someone who seemed fairly normal, had a good career, a girlfriend, and the normal amenities of life. He would gamble with millions but lived in a cheap apartment driving an old car.

Rotten Tomatoes review of Owning Mahowny is mostly positive comments about Philip Seymour Hoffman, but given the difficult nature of movies about addiction it is not surprising that some critics found it uncomfortable. Only released in 24 theaters so very few people saw it. Thanks for the recommendation.

Similar reviews for The Cooler which was released the same year. I think if you like one movie you'll like the other. The Cooler was released in 408 theaters, but most people saw it on the Sundance Channel.

Another small movie about con artists (but not gambling explicitely) is The Grifters from 1990 featuring a sexy Annette Benning and John Cusack, directed by the amazing Stephen Frears.

Lucky You was released in 2,525 theaters with Eric Bana, Drew Barrymore, Robert Duvall, Debra Messing, and Robert Downey, Jr. , yet it grossed half what The Cooler made. This movie has to be on the short list of the most disastrous gambling movies ever made.

Owning Mahoney was a GREAT movie. I think the best one on the subject of compulsive gambling, with Stuey in second. Also one of the best Canadian movies I have ever seen.

Regarding 'Lucky You,' the apartment where Drew Barrymore's character lived is where I lived my first six months in Vegas. It is on the corner of Town Center Drive and Sahara.

Quote: pacomartin

Another small movie about con artists (but not gambling explicitly) is The Grifters from 1990 featuring a sexy Annette Benning and John Cusack, directed by the amazing Stephen Frears.

Great movie, but you wanna talk about "uncomfortable"... wow. You'll need a shower after watching that one. Fantastic performances by Cusack, Bening, and Angelica Huston.

Quote: Wizard

Owning Mahoney was a GREAT movie. I think the best one on the subject of compulsive gambling, with Stuey in second. Also one of the best Canadian movies I have ever seen.

I recommended it to you when it came out six years ago. I realize that you run two fantastic gambling sites and I really enjoy how you remain so true to the simple math behind the games. You educate gamblers and potential gamblers. Even on this site, it had the ability to be taken over by people hawking their various systems yet the great majority of posters remain generally of the same view as you: that there are no systems to win money at the casino.

How about the National Lampoons Vegas Vacation? It is such a fun silly movie, great to watch on a rainy day! Where is the casino with the heads/tails, rock paper scissors, and pick a number between 1-10, (ok I know they don't exist) but it is so funny to see him take a major beating and have Sid Caesar save him. Oh yeah, that was way back in the day when you could enter the MGM through the mouth of the lion!

Quote: boymimbo

I recommended it to you when it came out six years ago. I realize that you run two fantastic gambling sites and I really enjoy how you remain so true to the simple math behind the games. You educate gamblers and potential gamblers. Even on this site, it had the ability to be taken over by people hawking their various systems yet the great majority of posters remain generally of the same view as you: that there are no systems to win money at the casino.

That was you? Thanks again for the recommendation, and the kind words. Agreed, there have been lots of outstanding posts here so far. Any posts by system salesmen would get busted, unless they appeared in the Free Speech Zone.

"Boiler Room" has a couple interesting little gambling scenes, where the main character is running blackjack tables out of his basement by night while (unkowingly) selling stock in non-existent companies by day.

Did anyone think of Rain Man when watching "The Hangover"? I "think" they were paying homage to the movie, but something tells me they were just copying it. The opening scene when they're going to play BJ is nearly identical (down to the color suits being worn).

TheArchitect

It's a parody of the "Rain Man" scene when Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman get matching suits and there is the shot of them coming down the escalator to the casino standing on the same step.

Quote: boymimbo

Just caught this on the tube today. Owning Mahowny, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Minnie Driver. It tells the true story of a Canadian banker, Brian Molony, who embezzles 10.2 million dollars to fuel his gambling addiction in Atlantic City.

New Jersey Gaming fined Caesar's a day's closure (day after Thanksgiving) for their part (not checking the source of his gambling funds).

Although lacking the glitz and glamour of a movie like "21", the story is fairly true and shows the degeneration of someone who seemed fairly normal, had a good career, a girlfriend, and the normal amenities of life. He would gamble with millions but lived in a cheap apartment driving an old car.

Owning Mahowney is not just a great gambling flick, it's a great flick period. it's been a few years since I watched it but I remember they rarely (if ever) showed the game play... usually just the main character placing the bets and winning and losing with little outward emotion... John Hurt was great in this movie too...

Premium Rush,
Not a gambling movie but has some great gambling scenes.
Particularly the cop losing in Chinatown gambling on pai gow tiles.
In debt big time playing pai gow tiles, goes to a shylock to get a loan to pay off debt but instead of paying off debt, goes to a different pai gow gambling den and loses again.
Vey funny and well done.

Anyone remember "Fever Pitch" with Ryan O'Neal, not the crummy Drew Barrymore movie about the Red Sox Fans of a few years ago?


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089139/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever_Pitch_(1985_film)

I just added this one to my queue on Netflix:

Gambling with Souls

Looks like a bit of a hoot: from 1936.




Youbetcha!

The Hustler
Rounders
The Baltimore Bullet
The Cincinnatti Kid

My favorite line was from the Baltimore Bullet where the old hustler tells the young hustler "Remember kid, I taught you everything you know, but I didn't teach you everything I know."

I love Owning Mahowny.

Chances are good that I have watched that movie more times than any living soul. I work from home and play the movie on my DVR a couple times each work day. I've been doing that for several years. It's very possible I watched the entire movie 2,000 times. Someone should put me in a straight jacket.

Edit- My screen name HowMany is a word jumble of Mahowny.

Owning Mahowny because I knew brian

Rounders, very entertaining, loved the russian guy "pay him heez money"

Let it ride because it had to be about me.

The sting because grifting is now a lost art.

Easy Money.....rodney dangerfield

How about The Color of Money

Holy Rollers?

Hard 8 (for the dice scene)
Casino (bring back the mob!)
The Cooler (the Baldwin character is awesome)
The Big Town (funny depiction of craps APs)

James Bond playing craps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V31rpJXbse4

I love James Bond, but if you watch him gamble in the movies, he is a PLOPPY.

Yet he always wins. Perhaps it's all cover? I can't figure it out.

Quote: HowMany

Yet he always wins. Perhaps it's all cover? I can't figure it out.

He cheats. That's perfectly ethical so long as it is performed secretly and on Her Majesty's service :P

The casino knew where the Canadian banker was getting his money and were prepared to act swiftly if it was ever forced to but kept the action going as long as there was plausible deniability.

The cooler was humorous but a bit too unrealistic.

I don't think the young punk rolling an Easy Eight after Sydney bet two grand on Hard Eight was all that great a scene. Most of the movie was the calm cool gambler imparting some semblance of "style" into the young punk whose father he had killed ... I think the famed craps scene just shows how futile it is to try to change a young punk from being a young punk.

Five Against The House
The Gambler (1974)
They Came To Rob Las Vegas

The runner is not a great movie but it has a cool blackjack scene in it. One of them desperate big BJ bets where an Asian female dealer makes a miracle 9 card 21 or something like that.

I cant fine just the BJ scene.

Loved The Cooler. Will have to try Owning Mahowny. It does not appear to be available via streaming right now.

Best black jack scene ever: Austin Powers....

Casino Dealer: 17.
Number Two: Hit me.
Casino Dealer: You have 17, sir.
Number Two: I like to live dangerously.
Casino Dealer: 21. Very good, sir.
Austin Powers: [has 5] I'll stay.
Casino Dealer: I suggest you hit, sir.
Austin Powers: I also like to live dangerously.
Casino Dealer: 20 beat your 5 sir. I'm sorry, sir.
Austin Powers: Well I must admit, cards aren't my bag, baby.

I like 'let it ride', horseracing movie with Richard Dreyfuss. I love the scene were his chooses the horse he is going to bet on by asking all his degenerate gambling friends, who they like and then eliminating that horse.

The Gambler with James Caan?

That opening scene was pure degenerate gambling there as Tony Soprano would say.

Didn't watch the rest of it.

Big hand for the little lady.

Old western movie. Made/set back in the days before "table stakes." IE, No "all in." If you couldn't afford to call, you were "shy" and borrowed from the pot, and paid the winner if you lost.

At one point the lady takes her cards to the local banker, shows him the hand, and asks him to help her cover the bet.

Can't tell ya more. Ya gotta watch it. Great movie. Great ending.

Lucky You (2007)...

Quote: UTHfan

That opening scene was pure degenerate gambling there

I didn't think all that much about the movie but it was the closing scene that had real impact on me. I didn't quite understand his motivation but I sure enjoyed the savagery.

I still vote for Croupier but wonder what really happened in the robbery and how the croupier says 'he gambled the money and won'.

Bet Raise Fold (Online Poker Documentary)
All In (Poker Documentary)
Grinders (Poker Documentary)
Rounders
Holly Rollers (Blackjack Documentary)

Someone should check out "California Split"

"The Last Casino" -- it's like the movie 21 but all Canadianlike. LOL. Just watched it. Definitely an.....interesting.....movie on card counting. Makes it seem like it's a easy game to beat, sketchy people, and lotsa money flowing around.

For those who have watched the movie, I'm confused about the ending (in spoiler so as to not ruin it in case anyone is gonna watch it).

St. John of Las Vegas I found to be entertaining -- though not much gambling.

I also enjoyed Hard 8, especially the scenes with Philip Seymor Hoffman.

Owning Mahowny is probably UNDER Hard 8 for me because it's maybe a little bit too depressing really.

As far as movies I would like to see would be something with more details on the North Las Vegas culture of craps playing.

Maybe something like a BET-style film on gangs, drugs, violence, crap tables, and all the superstitions of the gangster crap player.

I think a movie about dice and gangsta lifestyle targeted to the brother man instead of the other man might do well in the box office if it capture the "Foremaster scene" as well as the high-rolling Wynn craps pits with authenticity.

What about a fun movie like Maverick with Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster and James Gardner?

I found the movie amusing at some points and the card playing was just awful but it still made for a relatively enjoyable movie.

I can just hear Jodie Foster's southern drawl as I'm typing this LOL

Quote: Greasyjohn

The Gambler (1974)[amongst others]

Quote: UTHfan

The Gambler with James Caan?
That opening scene was pure degenerate gambling there as Tony Soprano would say..

Quote: FleaStiff

I didn't think all that much about the movie but it was the closing scene that had real impact on me. I didn't quite understand his motivation but I sure enjoyed the savagery

Overall a pretty bad movie, but the casino gambling scenes are the best I've seen in a movie. Fairly brief though.

On the other hand, I'll be damned if I can remember opening gambling scenes; I'll have to watch it again.



I reviewed it btw https://wizardofvegas.com/forum/off-topic/off-topic/17412-the-gambler-1974-film/

Casino Royale with Daniel Craig as James Bond.

Quote: odiousgambit

spoiler=Fleastiff and I are 'on opposites' for the closing scene (this is a spoiler)]I thought the end of the movie capped off the whole botched project. Caan has wronged an Af/Am athlete, so now he must make amends to the Black community by acting out in a Black bar in the most offensive way possible. He contrives to get in a fight and get himself cut up, to show that his real motivation with all this gambling is a desire for self-destructive behavior. Reminiscent of the very awkward way Af/Ams got into movies in those days if you ask me.

I think enough time has elapsed that I can not be too worried about being a spoiler.

Here is my take.

He is a Gambler, but most of all he is a winner.

He is a winner amongst the beasts and beings in the two worlds. He wins using his social and familial relationships, he wins using his relationships with the money men and their goons. Where others would lose limbs, he trods unscathed. The bookie doesn't leave him a little extra for roping in the young black dude, he manipulates the bookie to get that little extra.

He doesn't feel any remorse about roping young black dude into his first points shaving episode, He doesn't feel any guilt or angst about blacks. Its simply this is now a new world for him. He has won in the world of professional gamblers, family members, beautiful women, muscle men ... and now here he is in a new world, a world of young black violence.

so he goes into a bar where everyone in the place is black, everyone in the place has a blade and everyone in the place knows how to use it. And he wins!

He selects a young violent pimp as well as all the black men in the bar. He targets them. And he wins. He forces that pimp to back down and to do it in front of his friends, associates and even his own stable. He wins when he walks all alone and unarmed into a black bar and tells the violent black pimp, "I'm pushing you". He wins when he announces "I'm calling you Boy". He wins when he proclaims "I'm calling you, Nigger".

He wins when he turns self confident, smooth operating violent black Youngblood into quivering mass of pussey who realizes he is going to die because Crazy White Dude is going to win. Crazy White Dude will win if every black man in the bar joins in. Crazy White Dude will win because nothing will stop his attack. Nothing. Crazy White Dude is raw naked power that will overcome all weapons, all numbers and all common sense.

Crazy White Dude may be bloody and foaming and ranting, but in the end Crazy White Dude will be standing there... the winner!

The movie does not show "The Gambler" in a series of losses... it shows him in a series of wins, but mainly it shows him not only playing the game, but choosing to play the game.

Quote: FleaStiff

Here is my take.

He is a Gambler, but most of all he is a winner.

You got me to re-watch this.

No disputing that we have a different take. I didn't change my mind much, but I guess I can see your take. He dares the pimp to kill him, makes him back down, then whips his ass, though he does not walk out in triumph either, what with that injury.

No point in us arguing about it. The clincher for me is the bio on the screenwriter; I just don't believe he would intend that you take away from this movie what you did. I would need a lot of convincing that the protagonist isn't supposed to be viewed as extremely Narcissistic.


see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Toback ; to a degree the movie is auto-biographical.


I realize now after a second viewing that there is a theme involved with his interacting with Af/Americans. The movie does not treat them sympathetically, so it's making me wonder about the screenwriter that way too. 1974 was high time for a progressive or sympathetic view, and this film does not go there, not at all. Maybe the screenwriter's gambling past contained plenty of mixing with unsavory elements that would not be expected to leave good impressions. Still, something good has come of it, the character [Axel] shows a facility for interacting with Blacks, without patronizing them.

One of the film's first scenes with Af/Am's is at the school where he is teaching a Lit course. The class is fairly disrupted much of the time with an attitude of "being interested in this is acting white". One teenage basketball player in particular is a problem. Axel deals with it pretty well, and his ease with the Black students is evident.

Another early scene is when he pulls over and challenges a Black teenager to a one-on-one basketball contest that he loses - this after going through a losing streak gambling. He is so fired up about it that he puts up $20 if he loses, basically not a bet [like he wanted, the teenagers have no money]. Something's already going on here beyond problem gambling, it's racial, and I'm not sure I get it.

Then there's the point shaving. Finally, there's the scene with the pimp and prostitute.

There is also his [not-in-Dostoevsky] Jewish identity that gets played out. His grandfather is wealthy, and he is ultimately the heir. The film doesn't state so explicitly, but no doubt this helps fuel his gambling. Certainly we have all seen people who are expecting such windfall to exhibit bad behavior, spoiled basically, often gamblers. It's a proud family, he is dealing with that. His grandfather at one point calls him a Scholar; yet, seemingly well educated, he teaches at a high school, honorable enough but potentially a problem of image, especially in the absence of ambition to go further. This is there to pick up on, but is not exactly explored. Axel has his mother pull out her life savings [which he gambles] and of course the whole family will soon know of it. He is trying hard to fit into this and is screwing it up.

I think to enjoy the movie you have to enjoy pondering these elements. I picked up on it better in this second viewing. I was kind of thumbs-down first viewing.


BTW there is casino-style gambling at the very beginning ... an illegal set-up? he would not seem to be in Vegas or AC but where he lives and works, NYC apparently. It's a scene mostly about him owing money [$44k] and being hassled for it. Although in a streak of bad luck, he's trying to "raise" the money by gambling at the table games offered. The really good gambling scenes, where he goes to Vegas, are in the middle of the movie.

Quote: odiousgambit

He dares the pimp to kill him, makes him back down, then whips his ass, though he does not walk out in triumph either, what with that injury.

Making the pimp back down is the victory... and it wasn't the pimp that gave him that injury.

> that the protagonist isn't supposed to be viewed as extremely Narcissistic.
A Narcissistic WINNER.

> He corrupts the basketball playing student with a payoff
Yep, kicking and screaming and holding up his Bible as a futile defense against the Gambler's cash. He uses the black athlete the same way he used the black pick-up players. Convenience.

> casino-style gambling at the very beginning ... an illegal set-up?
There was an illegal casino in Brooklyn for 20 years and an illegal casino in Murray Hill area of Manhattan for six years.

I just saw a movie called "The Big Town". The movie takes place in Chicago in 1957. The movie stars Matt Dillon, Tommy Lee Jones and Bruce Dern.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092656/?ref_=nv_sr_1

There was plenty of action at the craps tables.

It was good, not great, but still worth a look.

Horse Racing Themed Films:

The Sting.

The Killing. Great film noir. The perfect crime gone wrong.

Wall of Noise. Hollywood Park in the early 60's.

Pool Hall Junkies
(Christopher Walken is one of my favorites)

The Gambler

A film tour of Las Vegas establishment shots but most casino interior scenes were filmed in New Orleans.

Storyline: Nick Wiley is a security expert working out of a desk in a sleasy law office in Vegas. We see him taking care of a few clients: an attractive young woman invited to a party who finds out she is the party for a mobster and his two tough guy bodyguards; a young insecure man who made 70MM before he was nineteen, a socially insecure man who wants to fake a fight to impress his 'cash-register hearted' girl friend. Nick's shtck: He don't never use a gun; he don't never need one. His other call to fame: he gambles big time and he always loses.

Script and novel by William Goldman.

I found four different movies called "The Gambler," but none have a plot such as you describe.

Please provide a link to its trailer.

Seven Thieves (1960)