Critic Reviews

This is a film that is quietly confident. Everything's well-composed. Everything's put together right. There's a very sure hand on the wheel here, and at this point, I'm sold on Rupert Wyatt as a guy who can tell a story with a certain kind of intelligence, both towards his subject and towards his audience.

This spiral of self-imposed despair feels like part three of a trilogy of American financial darkness after Killing Them Softly and The Counsellor. The Gambler isn’t quite so audience-unfriendly, but those looking for a typical Wahlberg thriller might come away disappointed. Others looking for a less sure bet might reap the rewards.

For all the hundreds of thousands of dollars being thrown around, The Gambler is much closer to a friendly game of poker with some loquacious, quick-witted friends than a glimpse at the gambling world’s dark underbelly. Neither is it a preachy moral tale.

Dialogue, we seem to have forgotten, matters, and the words — by the brutally funny screenwriter of “The Departed,” William Monahan — are electric eels, slithering and sinister and nasty. They sneak up and sting you, or sometimes tickle your toes. Lowlifes don’t actually talk this way? Yeah. But if only they did.

Actually, Mom is the essential difference between Wahlberg and Caan. Caan has the glow of mother love on him. Wahlberg plays Jim as having made the adjustment to a lack of love, but in a twisted way. He's gambling now to see if the universe loves him.

The 2014 iteration isn't as good as its 1974 predecessor but it offers its share of small pleasures, not the least of which is the crisp, sharp dialogue that never loses its punch even when it veers close to the edge of pretentiousness.

The new version uses addiction as a vehicle to tackle larger themes, eloquently explored by Monahan’s dialogue, which sings in a way uncommon to tough-guy crime-dramas.

In nearly every scene, Wahlberg carries off the central role with what could be called determined elan.

Wyatt is a supremely confident filmmaker. His style is multitudes sleeker than Reisz’s original, but his eclectic taste, particularly in the soundtrack, reveals a true connection to the earlier era.

The pleasures offered by The Gambler are simple, but don’t hold that against it. Wyatt, director of the 2011 surprise hit Rise of the Planet of the Apes, brings some bristly, swaggering energy to the thing, and that in turn may have loosened Wahlberg up: He’s both more intense and freer than he’s been in years.