Owning Mahowny Review
by Shannon Patrick Sullivan (shannon AT morgan DOT ucs DOT mun DOT ca)October 17th, 2003
OWNING MAHOWNY (2003) / ** 1/2
Directed by Richard Kwietniowski. Screenplay by Maurice Chavet, based on the book "Stung: The Incredible Obsession Of Brian Molony" by Gary Stephen Ross. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Minnie Driver, John Hurt. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated AA by the MFCB. Reviewed on October 17th, 2003.
By SHANNON PATRICK SULLIVAN
Synopsis: Bank manager Dan Mahowny (Hoffman) is a compulsive gambler in hock to his bookie (Maury Chaykin). Desperate, Mahowny defrauds his own bank to get the money. Realising how easy this deception was, Mahowny starts embezzling more and more funds, and soon makes a name for himself at a casino run by Victor Foss (Hurt) -- putting his job, his freedom, and his relationship with his girlfriend (Driver) all on the line.
Review: "Owning Mahowny" is a brave movie: it paints a serious addiction not as a source of melodramatic victories and crises, but as an inevitable force of nature. The result is a film which delves deeply into the nature of the people involved, strongly favouring character over incident. Such an approach demands much from the cast, and so it is fortuitous that this movie has commanded the services of actors like Hoffman and Hurt. These are performers capable of immersing themselves in a role -- of approaching their characters as distinct identities, rather than as distorted versions of their own personas. They are able to lend the audience a much deeper appreciation of the complexities of their characters so that, for example, Mahowny comes across not as merely an obsessed loser, but as a man so caught up in the rush of gambling that the game has become an end in itself. Many of the supporting players deserve similar kudos, such as Chaykin in a delightfully cheeky role as Mahowny's ethical bookie. The downside to all this, however, is that "Owning Mahowny"'s interest in its protagonists is so all-encompassing that the events it portrays take on a sterile, repetitive, often tedious pallor; the movie becomes almost clinical in its dissection of its cast. As a viewing experience, then, "Owning Mahowny" is less successful than as an academic exercise.
Copyright © 2003 Shannon Patrick Sullivan.
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