Reviews

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Northfork

Owning Mahonwy

AxisPad (cheap Wal-Mart Joystick)

Owning Mahoney stars someone who is becoming one of my favorite actors, Philip Seymour Hoffman, in fact he was the reason I watched this movie.  I first noticed his talent when he played Lester Bangs in the movie Almost Famous, but he made me a believer for his starting role in the little independent movie Love Liza.  He becomes so focused in his character he has the power to become the character he portrays.

For this gig Hoffman becomes Dan Mahoney a young man (24) who has just been promoted to a bank manager.  I had no idea what this film was about before watching but the pieces all fell together within the first few minutes.  Mahoney gets a multimillion dollar loan account approved seemingly too simply by the client and he explains that everything is simple if you know how to work around the BS, I knew at that moment a great sum of money would be leaving this bank.  He goes into his new office and is confronted by a bookie who is seeking payment for Mahoney's loses. then I knew where the money would be going.  I just had no idea how much.

I grinned a smug grinned and bragged to my wife that I had figured it out, this goofy looking Mahoney with his bad suit, bad haircut and poor posture is actually a criminal mastermind and this whole character that we have seen is actually a front he will use to get away with it.  You see I couldn't have been more wrong, I have been hollywoodized.  If this was a hollywood movie then Edward Norton would play the goofy Mahoney by day and the slick criminal mastermind addicted to gambling away what he steals by night.  Thankfully this is not a hollywood movie and thankfully Hoffman plays Mahoney.  You see what makes this movie so good is that by day Hoffman plays the goofy Mahoney and by night Hoffman plays the goofy Mahoney addicted to gambling away what he steals.

I think the most rewarding aspect of watching this movie is you get to try and figure out what is motivating Mahoney. (So don't read any further if you want to see the movie)  He wants to gamble, but most people want to gamble because of the payoff.  Mahoney never shows on bit of  interest in money except as a means to gamble.  Some people may want to become high rollers because of the prestige it brings them but Mahoney turns down every perk the Casino tries to offer him.  As we see him lose more and more money we begin to think that maybe it's a personal finance thing, like the only way he could ever repay what he owes is to hit it big.  Then when we see him get all the money he needs to pay back his loses of nearly 10 million dollars but unable to stop playing and cash out we begin to understand what motivates Mahoney, it's the thrill and risk of high stakes gambling pure and simple.   

Again a warning for those who may be thinking of watching this movie.  It is slow, at times you might call it boring.  There is no fighting, there is no chase scene when Mahoney finally gets caught, there couldn't have been a chase scene since his old beat up Dodge, which Mahoney drives all the way through the movie while gambling away millions of dollars, gives up the ghost right before the cops make the big bust.  Even though the film has a razor sharp focus on Mahoney and his addiction it still manages to remain riveting right up to the end.