Mark Wahlberg is Jim Bennett and Brie Larson is Amy Phillips in The Gambler, from Paramount Pictures.
Slick but slight, The Gambler is an unnecessary remake of a well-regarded 1974 film, written by James Toback and starring James Caan, about an academic with a huge gambling problem, who piles up debts with a trio of loan sharks. Full of post-hippie fatalism and cynical macho barroom existentialism, the original film feels very much of its era, and the remake anachronistic.
Mark Wahlberg stars as Jim Bennett, an English professor and novelist (okay, sure) who denounces his students for their failure to understand that geniuses, like Shakespeare or Camus, count. ("If you're not a genius, don't bother.") And, with the exception of pretty Amy (Brie Larson), they're time-wasting mediocrities, which is probably not going to help his "rate my professor" card.
After accruing debts of almost a quarter-million dollars to a Korean casino, another 50 grand to a loan shark (Michael Kenneth Williams), he squanders a bailout from his socialite mom (Jessica Lange). As a last resort, he approaches the monstrous but insightful underworld kingpin, Frank (a very good and very bald John Goodman), who correctly reads Bennett's addiction as a death wish.
Rupert Wyatt, who directed 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, keeps the pace peppery, with surprising musical choices from Dinah Washington to Chopin to Bob Dylan, but despite his swagger, there's little point of identification with Bennett's privileged self-destructive character, unless you share his penchant for dangerous but dull games. Put it all on the red or the black – who really cares?